Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy:  – a Festschrift for John Woodhouse, Chapter 6 – T. Gwynfor Griffith

During the last two decades there has been a resurgence of interest, not by any means confined to Italy, in the works of the macchiaioli and postmacchiaioli. In this country, we were shown a fine collection of paintings from the former school at Manchester and Edinburgh in 1982.¹ In Italy, a splendid selection of works of artists who could be considered to fit the latter description was on view in Rome in 1993-94.² In addition, there have been numerous opportunities to study individuals connected with both groups, either in one-man shows or in other exhibitions of Tuscan art brought together under various headings. ³

All this has given new prominence to Llewelyn Lloyd (Livorno 1879 — Florence 1949). There have been paintings by Lloyd in the Uffizi and the Pitti in Florence and in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome since the first half of the twentieth century (to mention only the most prestigious of the galleries, from Novara to Lima, which have displayed something by him). If, in the decades following his death, signs of active interest in his work seemed fewer than Lloyd deserved, the last decade has brought compensation. Naturally, attention has been concentrated on his achievement as a painter; the Rome exhibition of postmacchiaioli, to give one instance, gave him a generous share of the space available. But there has been evidence that some consideration has also been given to what he wrote. And references to his writing and his presence in bibliographies suggest that scholars have been less interested in his slim volume on La pittura dell’Ottocento in Italia (Florence: Nemi, 1929), with its enthusiasm for his master Fattori and Fattori’s associates and pupils, than in the posthumous Tempi andati, prized for the careful witness Lloyd bore to the development of friends and close colleagues, like Oscar Ghiglia and Amedeo Modigliani, and the assessments he made of other contemporaries on whose works he had meditated for years.⁴ Tempi andati is also very valuable, of course, because of the accuracy of the chronological list it contains of paintings by Lloyd himself, a list known to be based on the admirable records he kept for decades in his diaries, and which must be the basis for any catalogue.

Llewelyn was the son of William Lloyd (1835—1884), who left Wales for Italy in 1859⁵, and who had a successful career as a merchant in Livorno, where he was joined in 1865 by his youngest brother and future partner Robert (1848-1923).⁶ After the death of William, Robert assumed responsibility for his brother’s children, as well as for the direction of William Lloyd and Co., the firm William had established. Since Llewelyn was not yet five years old when his father died, his uncle Robert was to have an important part in his life.

Authors of works on Llewelyn Lloyd have not always been accurate in what they have written about Lloyd’s family and Welsh background. In this essay, I propose to limit myself to correcting some misconceptions and to commenting on the nature of some of the evidence available, much of it unused. We can begin with what should be a relatively simple matter: the artist’s name.

Ugo Ojetti was an influential critic and editor who wrote favourably about Llewelyn Lloyd’s work. One of his essays begins:

Llewelyn Lloyd. Sotto questo inglesissimo nome che nelle orecchie di noi italiani ha un suono quasi femmineo si nasconde un toscano, meglio un livornese, tranquillo e ragionevole, alto e ben quadrato, di là dei quarantanni, il quale ormai dei suoi antenati inglesi non ha che gli occhi azzurri, la pacata favella e i modi cerimoniosi.⁷

[Llewelyn Lloyd. Under this very English name, which to the ears of us Italians sounds almost feminine, hides a Tuscan, or rather a Livornese, a quiet and reasonable man, tall and well built, in his forties, who of his English ancestors now has only the blue eyes, calm speech and formal manners.]

Since Ojetti’s imprecision in linguistic matters seems here to have been the basis for unjustifiable assumptions concerning Lloyd’s ancestry, we may perhaps be pardoned if we begin by stressing the obvious: the surname Lloyd is derived from the Welsh Llwyd. Of that name a recent authoritative work offers the following interpretation:

Llwyd is usually understood as the adjective ‘grey’, but |…] also includes shades of brown: ‘dŵr llwyd’ refers to the brown waters of a river in flood, ‘papur llwyd’ refers to old-fashioned wrapping paper or ‘brown paper’. It is very likely that when used of younger men ‘llwyd’ referred to brown or mouse-coloured hair. But ‘llwyd’ could of course be used also to refer to the grey hair of old age, and was occasionally found in compounds with ‘gwyn’ (white). ⁸

The Lloyds did not determine their own surname; the choice of Llewelyn as a Christian name is more interesting. If we look at boys’ names borne by Lloyds of Hendrefigillt, from the time we first encounter them there until the birth of the painter, we find that, before we come to those chosen by the painter’s father, the family had been content with names like Edward, John and Robert, none of them specifically Welsh, with the sole exception of Evan, which occurs only once. Indeed, the repetition of a small number of such names, from generation to generation, and for cousins of the same generation, sometimes makes study of individuals in the family quite tricky. It was Llewelyn’s father, in exile in Italy, who introduced into the family tree such conspicuously Welsh names as Llewelyn, Idris, and Emrys. That suggests that he may have had a strong sense of national identity, and that impression is confirmed by the two letters from William Lloyd (one in Welsh, one in English) that survive. Such a man would be conscious of the fact that Llewelyn (or Llywelyn) ⁹ was the name borne by two famous Welsh rulers: Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, called Llywelyn Fawr ‘Llywelyn the Great’, who died in 1240, and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, known in Welsh as y llyw olaf the last prince’, who was killed in 1282 while at war with the English Crown.

But would not Llewelyn have been a rather inconvenient Christian name for a boy brought up in Livorno? Roberto Papini obviously thought it unpronounceable and suggests that other friends shared his view:

‘Con Lloyd (nessun amico l’ha mai chiamato col suo nome gallese irto di doppia elle, di doppio vu e d’ipsilonne) […]’¹⁰

 [With Lloyd (none of his friends ever addressed him by his Welsh Christian name, bristling with double l, w, and y) (…)].

This makes one wonder what Llewelyn’s own attitude was, or how Welsh he was. His mother, Luisa Bianchini, was an Italian speaker who belonged to a family which had come to Livorno from Canton Ticino. Lewis Allan, who had the benefit of acquaintance with the painter’s elder son William, was doubtless right when he wrote that Llewelyn did not speak Welsh, but he recorded that:

Among his most personal possessions, the sketch books and notebooks of his youth, I came across an English-Welsh dictionary, yellowed and coverless, printed in the last century by William Evans of Carmarthen […] He had preserved it as a kind of heirloom […]. ¹¹

It is certainly notable that, although he was baptized Llewelyn Edoardo Guglielmo Lloyd, the painter never used any Christian name other than Llewelyn. The signature on his paintings is usually either Llewelyn Lloyd or LI. Lloyd. His use of the latter suggests that he at least knew enough Welsh to understand that in that language ll stands for a different sound from l, and is therefore considered a separate letter in the Welsh alphabet. Illustrations which he made for books he sometimes labelled simply LLOYD in capital letters.¹² I know of only one instance of his choosing to translate his name: a youthful self-portrait bears the words: ‘Leolinus Lloyd se ipsum pinxit. Anno Domini MCMI.’ As for Llewelyn’s own pronunciation of his name, I recall that when I discussed his works with his younger son, the Florentine architect Roberto Lloyd, I was stopped more than once by his desire to hear me repeat his father’s name. My pronunciation of Llewelyn, he said, was exactly that of his father, to which he added sadly that the name sounds rather different now in Via Llewelyn Lloyd, Livorno, or in the Viale Llewelyn Lloyd named after the painter on the island of Elba.

Among publications on Llewelyn Lloyd, Ferdinando Donzelli’s Llewelyn Lloyd (1879-1949) is of fundamental importance. ¹³The author has attempted a catalogue of the artist’s works, given us a brief account of his career, and discussed movements, like Division ism, with which he was connected. The text is accompanied by a number of good illustrations. The least satisfactory part of the book is the Section on Lloyd’s origins and family; here the author has clearly lacked access to Welsh Sources. The first feature that struck me as odd when I read the book was that the author informs the reader that the family came from Hendrefigillt in Wales, but fails to tell him where that house or farm (which was what the name suggested to me) could be found. As I read on, it seemed obvious that the author believed Hendrefigillt to be a town and presumably large enough not to need further location. This puzzled me until I discovered an article in an Italian periodical based on an interview with Margaret Lloyd Cricchio (1910—2000), the daughter of Robert Lloyd. ¹⁴ Margaret, as I discovered when I met her in 1998, had taken a keen interest in what her father had told her, and what she could gather from the papers he left, about the history of the family. And she had told the interviewer quite correctly that the Lloyds to which she belonged were Lloyds of Hendrefigillt. She and her son had also given the editor of the periodical a number of photographs from a family album suitable for use as illustrations. One of these appeared in the article over the caption Hendrefigillt (Galles). It is, in fact, a photograph of the High Street of the town of Mold in Flintshire.

The Hendrefigillt which was home to the Lloyds was a farm in the parish of Halkyn (Welsh Helygain) in that county. ¹⁵ The Lloyds were tenant farmers there from 1749 until 1874. There has for centuries been mining and quarrying around Halkyn mountain, and Hendrefigillt, after the departure of the Lloyds, became the property of a mining company. The house was pulled down in the nineteen-twenties, and the site is still being worked as Hendre Quarry. The first Lloyd to have been a tenant of Hendrefigillt, Peter, died in 1771, and was succeeded in the tenancy by his widow Elizabeth. She had several sons, and in 1778 she took on, in addition, the tenancy of a neighbouring farm, Llety’r eos, Rhosesmor. At her death in 1783, the tenancy of both farms passed to her son Edward. In 1783 he ceded Llety’r eos to his brother Peter Lloyd, who in that year had married Margaret Bellis, and would presumably have then needed a farm of his own in which to raise their family. By the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, one of the sons of Peter and Elizabeth was settled in Hendrefigillt and another in Llety’r eos.¹⁶ Both these men were to have descendants who were to play a prominent part in the economic life of Livorno. Llewelyn Lloyd and his elder son William worked on a family tree during and after their visit to Wales in 1938. A copy of their work was given to me by Llewelyn’s other son Roberto. I used information from registers of parish churches in Halkyn, Cilcain and Mold, from census returns, and from assessments for contributions to poor relief, much of it previously gathered by Bryn Ellis, in order to compile a more accurate table showing all members of the Lloyd family who lived in Hendrefigillt between 1749 and 1874. This was published in my O Hendrefigillt i Livorno (see above note 6).

In the different table that accompanies the present essay, I have included only those of them who are both descended from the original Peter and Elizabeth Lloyd of Hendrefigillt and mentioned in my text as relevant to the history of the Lloyds in Tuscany. But I have also included those descendants of Peter Lloyd and Margaret Bellis who, although also descended from the original Lloyds of Hendrefigillt, lived in Llety’r eos before (as we now know) going to Livorno. Since my main concern on this occasion has been to cast light on Llewelyn Lloyd’s family background, I have not continued his line beyond the time of his children. And I have mentioned only one of the children of his uncle Robert. Both Llewelyn and Robert had (and have) descendants in later generations.

Researchers who venture into this field will find that their work has now been made much easier than it would have been in 1938 by the members of Cymdeithas Hanes Teuluoedd Clwyd/ the Clwyd Family History Society, who have transcribed church records of those births, marriages and deaths which took place before civil registration became the norm. But research can still be made difficult, not only by the large number of the inhabitants of the region sharing a few names (e.g. Thomas Lloyd), but also by other local or family complications, of which I shall cite one by way of illustration. Since Hendrefigillt is in the parish of Halkyn, I expected to find in the church registers there the details of the births of William and Robert Lloyd, the father and the uncle of the painter. They were not there, although other Lloyds of Hendrefigillt were. Luckily, at this stage I consulted Bryn Ellis, local historian (and Chairman at that time of the Clwyd Family History Society). He pointed out to me that, since William Lloyd was born in 1835, his father (another Robert Lloyd) had not at that time become the tenant of Hendrefigillt, as Robert’s father Edward (1750-1840) was still there, near the end of a tenancy that had lasted since 1782! Doubtless for that reason, Robert became the tenant, first of a farm called Tarth-y-dwr, and then of a farm called Tyn twll, both in the parish of Cilcain.

The first three of Robert’s children were therefore to be found in the register of Cilcain parish church (and William, the eldest, naturally among them). In 1840 Robert succeeded his father at Hendrefigillt, and, as I had expected, the next two children (born in 1841 and 1842) were recorded in Halkyn parish registers. But there were four more still to come. Of these, two are still unaccounted for, but Mr Ellis remembered that the other two (of whom Robert was conveniently one) were baptized in a Nonconformist chapel: Ebeneser, the chapel of the Welsh Independents, at Rhes-y-cae. Nonconformity spread rapidly in Wales in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, we do not know the dates or other details of the family’s Nonconformist affiliations. It is quite possible that the two missing children’s names will eventually be found in another chapel register, although we must remember that not all the Nonconformist churches kept records of baptisms. As it happens, Robert was born late enough (1848) to be included in civil registration of births; but I did not know when I first looked for information about him in church registers that one day in Livorno his daughter, then eighty-eight years old, would give me a copy of a certificate of registration of his birth at Holywell Registry Office!

Hendrefigillt was part of an estate owned by a well known family of Welsh landowners, a branch of the Mostyn family, settled in Cilcain Hall.¹⁷ There is every indication that it was a good farm and that the Lloyds were keen farmers, One of their descendants, Mr John Zehetmayr, still has a handsome silver cup which bears the inscription: ‘The gift of Thomas Mostyn Edwards to his tenant Edward Lloyd of Hendrefigillt for the best crop of turnips in the year 1814.’ The Lloyds could also afford to employ an adequate number of servants to work the land effectively. The census returns of 1841 show that Robert Lloyd, then aged 35, and his wife Maria, then aged 30, lived there with their children William (6), Edward (4) and Thomas (3 months). They had four male and two female servants. But, of course, the Lloyds were tenants, not landowners. Moreover, the family tree shows that they were producing between 7 and 11 children in each generation while at Hendrefigillt. It is estimated that the population of Wales was half a million in 1770.

By 1851 it had more than doubled to 1,163,000. Dr John Davies has pointed out that Wales was now achieving in two generations the kind of increase which had previously taken twelve. And the pace was maintained: the 1,163,000 of 1851 had become 2,523,000 sixty years later.¹⁸ Some of the excess population of the rural areas found employment in the rapidly developing heavy industries in the south and northeast of the country; in this respect, Wales was more fortunate than Ireland. But emigration was still the way of escape chosen by many. But would their knowledge of English not have made it easier for William and Robert to seek their fortune in some part of the British empire, or in the United States? Their sister Mary, who married John Hughes, did so in Fond-du-Lac, Wisconsin.¹⁹ What did Livorno have to attract them?

Medieval Livorno had been an insignificant village. From 1103 it belonged to Pisa, from 1399 to the Visconti, and then from 1407 to the Genoese. But in 1471 the Genoese sold it to the Florentines, who needed a good outlet to the sea. And it was under the Medici that Livorno grew rapidly in size and importance. From 1547, Cosimo I was offering merchants who settled there ten years’ exemption from taxes. New residents were attracted also by remission of all penal sentences, other than those imposed for treason and murder. Construction of a fine harbour, the porto mediceo, began in 1571. In 1579, Francesco de’ Medici laid the first stone of the great new town which Bernardo Buontalenti had been commissioned to design, and his bold plan, with its wide streets and generous piazzas, became a model for planners from other lands; the Livornesi still recall with pride the debt owed by Inigo Jones, in his plan for Covent Garden, to their Piazza Grande. In 1593 Ferdinand I (Grand Duke of Tuscany 1587-1609), through his Costituzione livomina, invited people of any nation and any religion to take advantage of the city’s privileges, and Livorno rapidly became famous for its relative tolerance. Since it was a place where merchants of all creeds were allowed to practise their own religions, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants lived there alongside Catholics. By the middle of the eighteenth century there were more foreigners than natives, and Livorno was a great port.²⁰ Yet there was a cruel irony in the success that Tuscany’s rulers had fostered. As the port grew in importance, Tuscany’s relative economic position declined, with the result that it became necessary to make the most of Livorno’s international, rather than national, status:

Ne consegue il fenomeno per cui si crea una città staccata quasi completamente dalla vita toscana, che vive quasi indipendentemente dal suo retroterra troppo povero e fa una politica opportunistica di stretta neutralità in mezzo a guerre d’ogni genere e, in materia di religione, si mostra tollerante rispetto alla cattolicissima Toscana.21

[Consequently, we have the phenomenon of a city almost completely detached from Tuscan life, living independently of its very poor hinterland, following an opportunistic policy of strict neutrality in relation to wars of every kind and, in religion, showing itself tolerant in comparison with very Catholic Tuscany.]

From 1676 it was a free port, and so it remained until 1860, when the inhabitants voted in a referendum to join the new united Italy. The British had been present in Livorno since the sixteenth century, and in the eighteenth the British Factory was an important body. Factory in this context meant a council offactors, the heads of British businesses in Leghorn, as the English called it. There were times when over half of the cargoes in the port were the property of members of the British Factory. Their golden age came to an end with the arrival of Napoleon. From 1796 onwards they suffered immense losses. Three times they had to leave their warehouses. The longest period of exile lasted from 1803 until 1814. During this period some of the British merchants carried on their business from Malta. Not all of them came back in 1814. The British were never again to be as powerful in Livorno as they had been in the eighteenth century, but once again during the nineteenth they did become a substantial colony, large and active enough to be important in the economic life of the port.²² Margaret Lloyd Cricchio, summarizing family tradition, told me that the first Lloyd to venture into business in Livorno was called John and that ‘after a few years’ he was joined by ‘a young relative’ called Thomas.²³ Professor Arthur Whellens, in his valuable research on the early history of the Lloyds in Livorno,²⁴ found a reference to John, as Giovanni Loid, in 1816, and in 1817 he was a substantial payer of tax. He flourished, and in 1826 was President of the Livorno Chamber of Trade.

Professor Whellens also noted that in 1827 a ship from Liverpool brought him a cargo which included 345 ingots of lead (a fact which prompts me to wonder whether its ultimate place of origin might be Halkyn mountain). Thomas was a cousin who came to work with John in 1824, and was made a partner in the firm in 1830. Margaret Lloyd Cricchio was adamant that both John and Thomas were ‘Lloyds of Hendrefigillt’, as she was herself.²⁵ After John had returned to Britain, the company became known as Thomas Lloyd & Co.²⁶ In 1837 another young Lloyd, this time a fifteen-year-old boy called Edward, went to Livorno to join the family firm. He became an intelligent and ambitious businessman and, in collaboration with an Italian chemist, devised a more economic method of processing the boracic acid which was one of the Lloyds’ exports. He was made a partner in Thomas Lloyd’s company in 1847, but he felt that the terms offered him did not adequately reflect his contribution to the now very substantial profits. Relations between him and Thomas deteriorated and led to litigation, which Professor Whellens has traced.²⁷

In 1857 it was agreed that Edward should take charge of the London branch of the company, and that he should receive a fixed percentage of the profits made from the export of boracic acid from Livorno. In exchange, he was not to interfere further in the affairs of the company in Tuscany. This settlement, however, was followed by another dispute over Thomas Lloyd’s accounting, and to a final separation. The autonomous company over which Edward thereafter presided in London is still in existence, I was unsure of the identity of this Edward (one of the many in the family) until I received a letter from Mr J.W.LI. Zehetmayr following the publication of my O Hendrefigillt i Livorno.

He informed me that Edward was his great-grandfather and offered some clues as to his position among the Lloyds. One of these was a letter written by Edward to his wife Louisa in London in 1861, while Edward was on a visit to his parents in Wales. It was headed Llety’r eos, and it was therefore possible, with the aid of parish registers and census returns, to establish that this Edward was the son of Evan Lloyd, the son and successor of that Peter Lloyd of Hendrefigillt (b. 1753) who had become the first Lloyd to settle in Llety’r eos.

On the identity of Thomas Lloyd, Donzelli wrote:

Anche un altro fratello di William e Robert venne in Italia, a Livorno, intorno alla metà dell’Ottocento e precisamente Thomas Lloyd. Thomas, che era nato nel 1841, anche lui a Hendrefigillt nel Galles, acquistò dei terreni nei pressi dell’Ardenza (alla periferia di Livorno) e una villa situata di fronte all’odierna costruzione dell’Accademia Navale. Questa villa aveva la caratteristica di essere dipinta di rosso, come i piccoli edifici circostanti, e di qui ne derivò una denominazione popolare di ‘case rosse’: tali case furono anche indicate con l’appellativo di ‘case dei Lloyds’. […] A Livorno un’altra importante villa, oggi denominata villa Fabbricotti, sede della Biblioteca Labronica e del Museo Civico ‘Giovanni Fattori’, fu villa Lloyd.28

[Another brother of William and Robert also came to Livorno, about half-way through the nineteenth century, to be precise Thomas Lloyd. Thomas, born in 1841, also in Hendrefigillt in Wales, acquired land in the Ardenza district (on the outskirts of Livorno) and a villa situated opposite what is now the Naval Academy. This villa was painted red, as were also the smaller dwellings around it, and therefore they became known popularly as the red houses, also called the Lloyd houses. (…) At Livorno another important villa, today called the Villa Fabbricotti, the seat of the Livorno Library and of the Giovanni Fattori Civic Museum, was formerly Villa Lloyd.]

I think that here he may have been misled by seeing the partial family tree in the possession of Roberto Lloyd of Florence, which gives a date of birth, but no date of death, for the Thomas Lloyd mentioned by Donzelli. In fact, the Thomas Lloyd born in Hendrefigillt in 1841 died there in 1854, as can be ascertained from the Halkyn parish register and from a tombstone in the Old Cemetery in Halkyn. In Livorno, there were two Thomas Lloyds. The first, obviously belonging to an earlier generation than the boy mentioned above, arrived, as Whellens noted, in 1824. The second, the son and heir of the first, was born in Livorno in 1835.²⁹ They became wealthy. Today the house at the centre of Parco di Villa Lloyd in Livorno has become the home of the Livorno Tennis Club. It was once the residence of these Lloyds. They also, from 1860 to 1881, owned the villa which subsequently became known as Villa Fabbricotti, now the Biblioteca Civica. That, too, is surrounded by a pleasant park.³⁰

They were active as shipping agents, and as exporters of various products, varying from marble to boracic acid. Unlike William and Robert Lloyd, the father and uncle of the painter, they did not marry Italians, and Thomas Lloyd the Younger left Italy. Margaret Lloyd Cricchio stated that she had been told that he went to Scotland, but she did not know where.

Professor Whellens, after noting the prestige enjoyed by these Lloyds in Livornese society, wrote:

Nonostante questa posizione invidiabile, il 20 aprile del 1885, Tommaso scrive alla Camera di Commercio di Livorno una lettera in cui annuncia l’avvenuta liquidazione della ditta di Tommaso Lloyd e Co. Poiché dal catasto appare che nel 1905 non vi siano più proprietà immobiliari intestate a Tommaso Lloyd, si presume che questo tronco principale della famiglia cessi di avere rapporti con Livorno a quest’epoca. Rimane il mistero sul perché di questa repentina scomparsa di una famiglia cosí potente e cosí affermata.³¹

[In spite of this enviable position, on 20 April 1885, Thomas writes to the Livorno Chamber of Commerce to inform it of the winding up of the firm of Thomas Lloyd and Co. Since from the register it appears that in 1905 there Were no longer properties in the name of Thomas Lloyd, it must be presumed that the principal branch of the family ceased at this time to have connections with Livorno. The sudden disappearance of so powerful and well established a family remains a mystery.]

After reading that, I thought it might be useful to search in the Flintshire Record Office for any legal documents bearing their names. I found two, both concerned with their purchase of land in Flintshire.³² In those documents, Thomas Lloyd the Elder is referred to as ‘Thomas Lloyd of Leghorn’ and as ‘Thomas Lloyd of Hafod’. In one of them it is also clearly stated that his son and heir was ‘Thomas Lloyd of Minard Castle, Argyllshire’.³³ When I enquired there, Mr Remold Gayre, the owner of Minard Castle, helpfully suggested that I should seek further information from the Scottish writer and scholar Marion Campbell of Kilberry. From her I learnt that, in order to understand the departure of these Lloyds from Livorno, it was necessary to know something of a story that began in Argyll in the eighteenth century with a Scottish landowner called John Campbell. His ancestral estate was known as Knockbuy (a corruption, presumably, of Cnoc Buidhe) and centred on Knockbuy House. In 1798 he inherited from a cousin another estate and with it Kilberry Castle. When he died, he left both estates to his eldest son, but with the command that he should provide for his five brothers and four sisters and the widow. John Campbell II of Kilberry concluded that this could be done honourably only by selling one of the two estates. And since Kilberry was entailed, that could most conveniently be accomplished without recourse to the courts, by selling Knockbuy. He did so, although he then had to face the considerable expense of rebuilding parts of Kilberry Castle, destroyed by fire in 1772.

In the years between 1831 and 1874 there were three owners in Knockbuy. The house was greatly enlarged and renamed Minard Castle. After the death of John Campbell II of Kilberry, his widow and daughters went to Livorno, where they lived in the house of Mrs Campbell’s brother, Alexander MacBean, a successful businessman and sometime British consul. Thomas Lloyd the Younger married the second daughter, Anne Campbell, in October 1863. At the time, the bride’s brother, John Campbell III of Kilberry, was serving with the British Army in India. On his return, he fell in love with his brother-in-law’s sister, Margaret Lloyd, and they were married in 1870. They then went to live in their castle in Kilberry, where John became a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant. Thomas Lloyd and his wife Anne felt that they too would like a home in the Highlands, and asked ‘Iain and Maggie’ to look for a suitable house. By chance the latest owner of Minard Castle was by this time bankrupt, and the estate was for sale. Thomas Lloyd realized that he could now buy back the former home of his wife’s family, and did so, gradually selling his property in Livorno. He then, like the man who was doubly his brother-in-law, became a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant in Argyll.34 But he never relinquished his family’s Welsh connections.

He kept a house, Cefn Mawr, a mile or two from the Hafod with which his father had been associated, and was buried in Gwernaffield Parish Church. On the wall there is a marble monument bearing the following inscription:

THIS MONUMENT WAS ORIGINALLY EXECUTED
IN MEMORY OP JOHN AND JANE CHILDREN OF
THOMAS LLOYD OF LEGHORN
THEY DIED 23rd AND 25th SEPTEMBER 1842
IT IS NOW PLACED IN THIS CHURCH
TO THE GLORY OF GOD
AND SACRED TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF
THOMAS LLOYD HIS SON
BORN DECEMBER 3rd 1835 DIED JULY 8th1905
BY HIS CHILDREN
WHERE LOYAL HEARTS AND TRUE
STAND EVER IN THE LIGHT.
ALL RAPTURE THROUGH AND THROUGH
IN GOD’S MOST HOLY SIGHT
NOVEMBER 1905

ALSO IN EVER LOVING MEMORY OF
ANNE, WIFE OF THOMAS LLOYD
BORN JULY 17th 1845, DIED APRIL 9th 1916

Beside this monument a metal plaque records the death of a son of Thomas and Anne’s, Walter Lloyd, a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, killed in Gallipoli in 1915. This still leaves the problem of the exact identity of Thomas Lloyd the Elder unsolved. When I published O Hendrefigillt i Livorno, I included in it a genealogical table of the Lloyds of Hafod prepared by Arthur Lloyd of Pantybuarth and given to me by Miss Marion Campbell. I expressed some doubt about the table, pointing out that I had not myself worked on it, as I had on that of the Hendrefigillt family, and adding that I had been unable to confirm some entries in it. One of the statements I had been unable to confirm was the date of birth of Thomas Lloyd the Elder. I have now come to believe that the table is erroneous in the parts concerning the ancestors of that Thomas Lloyd and his birth, but that it is probably correct in the information it gives about his descendants.

In the Flintshire Record Office at Hawarden there is a somewhat battered volume, some eleven inches long by nine inches wide, with a brown spine and marbled grey covers, whose external appearance may at first suggest it is some nineteenth-century schoolboy’s exercise book.³⁵ But the contents are neither translations from Latin nor essays in English composition. They are copies, seemingly autograph, of letters written by one Edward Lloyd during the years 1837—8, mainly from Port au Prince in Haiti. An attached note from the donor, Mrs Susan Mayer, explains that the book came from Hafod, Gwernymynydd, a village near Mold. The house, now the Pias Hafod Country Hotel, was once the home of Edward Lloyd.³⁶

The letters are not easy to read. In places the ink has faded to an illegible light brown; in others, darker in colour, it has seeped through the thin paper, rendering the reading of both sides a trial. Recently the Record Office has acquired a helpful typescript based on a transcription of the letters made by Mrs Mayer over thirty years ago. Gaps in it show that even then some of the most faded lines defied interpretation. Edward Lloyd does not provide us with the names and addresses of most of those destined to receive his letters. Presumably, the salutation in each (‘Dear Lark’, ‘Dear Freeland’, ‘My dear Parents’) would for his purposes have been sufficient record. Some of the letters are clearly to business associates or employees, and refer to conditions of trade in Haiti. Others are either to other Lloyds, or about other Lloyds, or refer to persons connected to them by marriage (‘my cousin John Lloyd’, ‘my brother John’, ‘my brothers Hugh and Robert’, ‘my nephew Robert Foulkes’).

They give the impression that Edward was the controlling partner in various family enterprises, involving business in widely scattered locations, from Manchester to Haiti, and from Liverpool to Livorno. Some of them are clear enough without interpretation, as where Edward writes to authorize ‘my cousin Mr John Lloyd of Manchester to receive from my account any sum which may become due to me from the first dividend of the Hendrevigillt Mining Company, of which I am a partner’.³⁷

Others, in the present state of our knowledge, are baffling.

On March 3, 1838 Edward wrote to his parents to inform them that

[…] it is my intention to embark for England by a packet expected to call at Jacmel in this Island about the end of the month, and you may expect to learn [of] my arrival at Falmouth about the 5th of May next […] and I hope to find you all well and hearty at Hendrevigillt […] You will be good enough to say to Robert Foulkes that he is to remain at home until he sees me, but most probably will be directed to return to Port au Prince soon after my arrival in England.

In another letter to his parents, dated November 25 1837, Edward had written: Ί observe what you say about Evan’s son and now say to John Lloyd that he may go to Leghorn, provided he is likely to be useful to Tom.’ And a letter written the same day beginning ‘Dear Cousin’ (and presumably to John Lloyd) conveys the same decision concerning the employment of Edward: Ί hear that Tom wants E. Ll. — Evan’s son — I have no objection to his going to Leghorn provided he can be of use to your concern — my intention was to have employed him either here or at Liverpool.’ After his return to England he wrote, on November 3, 1838, to Tom himself:

Dear Tom, I have been harried from place to place so much that I could not be a regular correspondent, but as Lark has gone out to Port au Prince to relieve Dupuy I must be more stationary for the winter and I will be regular in my correspondence. The mine work is promising and profitable as ever — all well at Hendrevigillt […] We are doing very much better business with Manchester — our supplies go from Glasgow principally — when Depuy comes here in the Spring I intend to accompany him to Paris, from thence to Lyons, Marseilles and Leghorn where I expect to find you and now your large family quite happy and where I will have many pardons to ask and many apologies to make to Maggy. In the meantime keep her in the best temper you can with me and present my sincerest regards to her. As respects the Consulship I suppose it can be best settled when I am in Tuscany. You will hear again from me. Yrs affectionately Edward Lloyd

The Edward Lloyd writing from Haiti to his parents in Hendrefigillt must be the Edward Lloyd born in December 1789, the eldest son of the Edward Lloyd (1750— 1840) who was the tenant of Hendrefigillt from 1782 until 1840. Census returns show that Edward Lloyd ‘merchant’, was living in Hafod in 1841 and 1851 (when he was 61 years old), and that his widow Agnes and their sons lived there after his death (which occurred at Hafod on 16 May i860, with his will being proved on 23 July). I believe that the Tom to whom he wrote in Livorno was his brother Thomas born in Hendrefigillt in 1803, and that he is the Thomas described by Professor Whellens as arriving in Livorno ‘ventunenne’ in 1824. This would explain why Thomas Lloyd the Elder of Livorno is described as ‘Thomas Lloyd of Hafod’ in a legal document, although census returns show the family of Edward Lloyd living there. Presumably, Thomas Lloyd spent most of his time at home in Livorno, but lived in Hafod while visiting Britain.

The last piece of the family jigsaw puzzle fell unexpectedly into place for me after the original submission of this essay to the editors, and has occasioned the addition of this paragraph. In January 2004 Bryn Ellis, of the Clwyd Family History Society, asked me to respond to an internet request for information about Edward Lloyd of Hafod. I did so. In return, Marjorie Robbins sent me a copy of a will. At the beginning of this will, which was drawn up in 1841, the testator identifies himself as ‘John Lloyd of Manchester, in the County of Lancaster’. But a note at the end, concerning the proving of the will in January 1849 in York and in February 1849 in London, describes him as ‘John Lloyd of Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, and of Hafod, nr. Mold, in the County of Flintshire’. In the body of the will, John Lloyd makes Edward Lloyd of Hafod one of his executors, refers twice to ‘my partner Thomas Lloyd of Leghorn’, and names various relatives to whom he makes bequests.

One of these is ‘my uncle Thomas Bellis of Berthddu’. It seemed to me that it should be possible to use the list of relatives to further identify John, who was obviously the founder of the Lloyd firm in Livorno, and I mentioned the matter to Bryn Ellis. He immediately realized that John was the son (b. 1788) of Peter Lloyd (1753-1829) and Margaret Bellis (1761-1798) of Llety’r eos, and the nephew of her brother Thomas Bellis of Penyparc, Berthddu (1763—1852), Edward Lloyd of Hafod was therefore strictly correct, in his letters from Haiti, in referring to him as ‘my cousin Mr. John Lloyd of Manchester’. This identification is consistent with my belief that Edward Lloyd of Hafod and Thomas Lloyd the Elder of Livorno were brothers, and with the assertion by A. Whellens that John and Thomas were cousins.

John was also the uncle of the Edward Lloyd (1821-1879) whose partnership with Thomas Lloyd was dissolved. The Lloyds prominent in the commercial and social life of Livorno in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were thus all closely related: they were all direct descendants of the Peter and Elizabeth who settled in Hendrefigillt halfway through the eighteenth century. That, however, is less important for the immediate background of Llewelyn Lloyd than the next event in our story. Thomas Lloyd’s failure to retain the services of Edward Lloyd and the acrimonious dissolution of their partnership must have left a gap in the office in Livorno. And it was probably that gap which led to the invitation to William Lloyd of Hendrefigillt, the father of the painter, to join the family firm. He was to work for Thomas Lloyd for only five years (1859—64) before he, too, established a business of his own.³⁸

William Lloyd seems from the first to have been delighted with Italy, its culture, and especially its music. A letter he wrote to his sister Margaret in 1861 begins Carissima mia sorella Margherita, which is then translated into Welsh before William proceeds for four pages in English. It is signed ‘Guglielmo’. In it, William mentions, among several other matters, his ideas on importing some Italian music for which Welsh poets could be invited to supply new words in Welsh. I do not know that anything ever came of this idea; it is perhaps just as well that William entrusted his livelihood to the export of olive oil and anchovies. Nonetheless, the relevant passage is not without interest, as also his advice to Margaret on performance:

[…] You must not allow yourself to be entirely guided by English taste, that nation is certainly not musical. I pride myself that we of Cambrian race are endowed by nature with a truer ear and better appreciation […] You must therefore study Well what I will send you, guided by your own ear, and by the remarks generally used of piano, pianissimo, con anima, con vivacità […] I feel persuaded that you will eventually succeed and therefore not offend the refined ear of anyone coming from this land of the Muses. From Flendre the imported production of Italy may possibly extend over the whole of Wales, sung to Welsh words, the creation of some man inspired by the divine awen, so common in our country as well as in this. I have often thought that there is in this respect some resemblance between Wales and Italy, thé character of the two peoples is also not very dissimilar, both have boisterous passions and unruly tempers, the inhabitants of the latter country are certainly more polished and enlightened, the natural effects of thousands of years of civilization.³⁹

In 1865 William was joined by his youngest brother Robert. To him William wrote in Welsh while Robert was in port in Genoa on his way to Livorno, instructing him carefully on how he should behave while there.⁴⁰ Five years later, William married Luisa Bianchini, the daughter of Teodoro Bianchini and his wife Sofia, immigrants in Livorno like himself; they had come from Canton Ticino. Idris, the eldest child of William and Luisa, was born in 1871, to be followed by Emrys and Emery, twins, in 1872, another Robert in 1874, Elyn Margaret in 1876, Gwendolen in 1877 and Llewelyn in 1879, as well as by twins still-born.⁴¹ In 1873, Robert Lloyd, the father of the William and Robert in Livorno, died. Officially, his eldest son William followed him in the tenancy of Hendrefigillt. But William had been settled in Italy since 1859, and he must have accepted the tenancy only in order to have time to put the family’s affairs in order. The Lloyds left Hendrefigillt in the following year, and the farm was Sold. The widowed Maria and her daughter Margaret, with a female servant, moved to a substantial cottage called Rhyd Alun in the neighbouring village of Rhydymwyn. ⁴²

William Lloyd travelled frequently to Wales to find customers. On one of his journeys he caught pneumonia. He died in his mother’s house, Rhyd Alun, on May 1, 1884, and was buried in Halkyn a week later.⁴³

Family tradition has it that his brother Robert was So shocked by William’s death that he immediately swore that he would not himself get married until he had raised his brother’s children. To that task he was conscientiously to devote two decades of his life. Then he, too, married an Italian and had four children of his own. William’s eldest son, Idris, had been sent back to Wales to be educated, and was there at the time of his father’s death. On his return to Livorno, he took his place in the family firm, in which he was in due course to become Robert’s partner.⁴⁴ Idris was also soon old enough to join his bachelor uncle in some of his leisure pursuits. But Llewelyn was not yet five years old when his father died. Too young to join in the life of Idris and his uncle Robert, he was to spend much more time in the company of his mother and his sister Gwendolen.⁴⁵ He was also to enjoy a considerable degree of freedom, which allowed him to pursue, in the country and the port, his interests in the study of nature and in painting, which in turn were to lead him to reject the place he too was expected to fill in the company which had been founded by his father, and to become instead a pupil of Guglielmo Micheli’s. But that is something that belongs to a later chapter in the story, one to which Llewelyn himself chose to contribute. ⁴⁶

Notes

1. The Macchiatoli: Masters of Realism in Tuscany (Manchester City Gallery, 9 June — 24 July 1982; Edinburgh City Art Centre, 6 August — 25 September 1982). An important contribution to knowledge of the subject in the English-speaking world followed with the publication of N. Broude, The Macchiatoli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

2.I Postmacchiaioli (Palazzo Ruspoli, Rome, 3 December 1993—28 February 1994).

3. e.g. Telemaco Signorini (Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 8 February—27 April 1997); Geometria della luce: Il paesaggio toscano nella pittura italiana tra Otto e Novecento (Palazzo Mediceo, Serravalle, 14 July—23 September 2001); I Macchiatoli a Castiglioncello: Giuseppe Abbati 1836—68 (Castello Pasquini, Castiglioncello, 14 July—14 October 2001); Da Modigliani a Lloyd (Marina di Pietrasanta, 3 July—29 August, 2005, and Livorno, 18 September—21 November 2004). See also A. Parronchi, Coloristi toscani fra Ottocento e Novecento (Florence: Turati Arte, 1992), published to coincide with an exhibition in the Galleria Parronchi.

4. The original edition of Tempi andati was published by Vallecchi of Florence in 1951. A new edition is due shortly from Olschki as part of the first volume in the series ‘Arte toscana nel primo Novecento’: the text is to be accompanied by a selection of paintings by Lloyd.

5. Through the kindness of Peter Lloyd, the painter’s grandson, I have been able to see the unpublished notes on the history of the family left by his father, William Lloyd. Of the date 1859, he wrote: ‘Mio nonno venne per la prima volta a Livorno nel 1859 e lo prova il suo passaporto originale che è ancora in mano nostra’ [My grandfather came to Livorno for the first time in 1859, and this is proved by his original passport which is still in my hands]. I have seen this passport.

6. This date can be established by a letter in Welsh written by William Lloyd to his brother Robert when the latter was on his way to Livorno. For the text see my O Hendrefigillt i Livorno (Llandysul: Gomer, 2000), pp. 54—55.

7. Originally as an introduction to an early exhibition of Lloyd’s work in the Bottega d’Arte of Livorno in 1922—3, quoted in Ferdinando Donzelli, Llewelyn Lloyd 1879—1949. Con testimonianze e contributi di Giampaolo Daddi, Gwendolen e Roberto Lloyd (Legnano: Edicart, 1995), p. 182. 8. T. J. Morgan and Prys Morgan, Welsh Surnames (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985), p. 151.

8. T. J. Morgan and Prys Morgan, Welsh Surnames (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985), p. 151.

9. ‘*Lugubelinus is given as the British form which became Llywelyn […] It is perfectly obvious that it has no connection with Hew ‘lion’, but the attraction of ‘llew’ could not be resisted so that ‘Llewelyn’ became normal spelling […] The idea that the first element meant “lion” no doubt helped to produce the anglicised version Leoline*, (ibid., p. 147)

10. Roberto Papini, in the Premessa to Lloyd’s Tempi andati (Florence: Vallecchi, 1951), p. 6.

11. Lewis Allan, ‘Chi era Llewelyn Lloyd?’, Anglo-Welsh Review, 24:53 (Winter 1974), 73 — 86. Lloyd was certainly proud of his origins. In the nineteen-thirties, when it was made clear to him that his election to the Royal Italian Academy depended on his taking Italian citizenship, he declined to do so. This was to have serious consequences for him and his family during the Second World War, when he was interned as an enemy alien, and his son William became a prisoner of war in Japanese hands.

12. See, for example, the covers of the two volumes of La civiltà del Rinascimento in Italia. Saggio di Jacopo Burckhardt. Traduzione italiana di D. Valbusa. Terza edizione accresciuta per cura di Giuseppe Zippel (Florence: Sansoni, 1928).

13. Ferdinando Donzelli, Llewelyn Lloyd 1879 — 1949- The catalogue unfortunately omits Lloyd’s work as book illustrator and therefore does not list the item mentioned in the previous note.

14. [Lucia Borghesan], Ί Lloyd di Livorno’, CN. Rivista del Comune di Livorno, 6 (April-June 1993), 47-54·

15. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1:949 — 2002) gives, as the primary meaning of hendre, ‘winter dwelling located in the valley to which the family and its stock returned after transhumance during the summer months in the hafod on the mountain’. It is a common element in names of farms. I know of no other Hendrefigillt, but the second element is clearly a personal name, and is preserved in the same neighbourhood in the name of a stream, Nant Figillt. H.W. Owen informs us that variants of this name (Bugil, Bugail, Bigail, Bigel) survive in other place-names e.g. Llanfigail, Maen Bigel in Anglesey (H.W. Owen, Place-names of Dee and Alun (Llanrwst: Carreg Gwalch, 1996), pp. 33—34). Dr Owen also points out that the mutation of the initial consonant of the personal name after hendre is not unusual, e.g. the treatment of the name Morfudd in Hendreforfudd.

16. Bryn Ellis, The History ofHalkyn Mountain (Halkyn: Helygain, 1998). From our standpoint, the book is particularly useful for the section on mining and quarrying, and that on land ownership and holdings. For Hendrefigillt, see pp. 129 — 30. Ellis notes that enlargement of the farm in 1782 brought its acreage up to 145. It was later further extended. See n. 42 below. The author kindly made available to me, before the publication of his book, his extensive knowledge of farm tenancies and family history in the Halkyn area for use in my O Hendrefigillt i Livorno. Mansel Lloyd gave me genealogical assistance in the same period.

17. ‘It was Thomas, second son of Sir Thomas Mostyn (died 1641) who was the founder of the Cilcain Hall branch, inheriting that part of the vast Mostyn estate. The estate passed, through his daughter Charlotte to her son Thomas Mostyn Edwards’ (B. Ellis, p. 98).

18. John Davies, Hanes Cymru (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), pp. 307, 384.

19. Information from notes on family history left by William Lloyd (1907—80), the son of the painter.

20. Piero Innocenti, Il porto di Livorno (Milan: Giuffrè, 1968); Paolo Scrosoppi, ‘Il porto di Livorno e gli inizi dell’attività inglese nel Mediterraneo’, Bollettino storico livornese, 1 (1937), 339—80.

21. Paolo Scrosoppi, ‘Il porto di Livorno’, p. 345.

22. H.A. Hayward, ‘The British Factory in Livorno’ in Atti del Convegno di Studi ‘Gli Inglesi a Livorno e all’Isola d’Elba (sec. xvii-xix)’, Livorno e Portoferraio settembre 1979 (Livorno: Bastogi, 1980), pp. 261—67; Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, ‘Il porto di Livorno fra Inghilterra e Oriente’ in Nuovi Studi Livornesi, 1 (1993), 43—87.

23. This is based on conversation with Margaret Lloyd Cricchio (1910—2000). But it corresponds closely to what she had already told Lucia Borghesan. See L. Borghesan, Ί Lloyd di Livorno’, pp. 50—51. However, we should perhaps consider the possibility that John had previously heard of Livorno from other members of the Lloyd family who had been there. There are four Lloyds buried in the old British cemetery in Livorno (Peter, aged 5, who died in 1716; James, aged 5, d.1717; Elizabeth, aged six months, d. 1736; and Thomas aged 44, d.1745). And, according to H.A. Hayward, there are 16 in the cemetery used after 1840: H.A. Hayward, ‘Some considerations on the British cemeteries in Livorno’, Atti del Convegno di Studi ‘Gli Inglesi a Livorno e all’Isola d’Elba (sec. xvii-xix)’, pp. 23—30. We do not know if the earlier Lloyds were connected in any way with the Lloyds of Hendrefigillt.

24. A. Whellens, ‘Llewelyn Lloyd, “pittore labronico” e i Lloyds di Livorno’, C.N. Le vie del Comune, 16 (January-March, 1996), 29—40.

25. Thus Margaret Lloyd Cricchio, in conversation with me. Whellens writes: ‘[…] Nel frattempo Giovanni Lloyd ha chiamato un cugino, Tommaso, che arriva, ventunenne, a Livorno nel 1824. Nel 1830 questo diventa socio, e il nome della ditta perciò risulta essere Giovanni e Tommaso Lloyd. Nel 1842 Tommaso diventa unico responsabile della “casa” di Livorno, essendo Giovanni ritornato in Inghilterra, a quanto pare per curare gli interessi della ditta nella zona di Manchester e Liverpool’ [(…) In the meantime John Lloyd invited a cousin of his, Thomas, who arrived in Livorno, aged 21, in 1824. In 1830 this man became a partner, and the name of the firm consequently was given as “Giovanni e Tommaso Lloyd”. In 1842 Thomas became the sole person in charge of the Livorno “house”, since John had gone back to England, apparently to look after the interests of the firm in the Manchester and Liverpool area]. See ‘Llewelyn Lloyd’, p. 31. In a footnote to this paragraph, Whellens adds: ‘Alia Camera di Commercio di Livorno sono riuscito a trovare diverse “Lettere Commerciali” che ci consentono di ricostruire, almeno parzialmente, la intricata storia della ditta dei Lloyd e dei rapporti tra i vari membri della famiglia’.

26. ‘Scomparso John Lloyd, l’agenzia si trasforma nella “Thomas Lloyd & C.” assumendo un ruolo di primaria importanza nel porto di Livorno’ [After the departure of John Lloyd, the firm became ‘Thomas Lloyd & Co.’, and took on a prominent role in the port of Livorno]: see Umberto Ascani, ‘Agenti marittimi, ricevitori e raccomandatori inglesi a Livorno nell’800’, in Atti del Convegno di Studi ‘Gli Inglesi a Livorno e all’Isola d’Elba (sec. xvii-xix)’, p. 56).

27. Whellens, ‘Llewelyn Lloyd’, p. 31. I am indebted to Mr J.W. Ll. Zehetmayr for information concerning the dispute between Edward and Thomas Lloyd.

28. F. Donzelli, Llewelyn Lloyd (1879 — 1949), p· 14.

29· The date is given on the monument in Gwernaffield parish church.

30. Whellens notes that they also owned the Villa delle Pianacce between Montenero and Antignano (‘Llewelyn Lloyd’, p. 38, n. 12).

31. Ibid., pp. 31-32.

32. Archifdy Sir y Fflint/ Flintshire Record Office, D/BC/2644 and D/GW/259.

33. D/GW/259.

34. For the information on Thomas Lloyd the Younger and his wife Anne Campbell, and for that on John Campbell and his wife Margaret Lloyd, I am indebted to the late Marion Campbell of Kilberry, who was the grand-daughter of John Campbell and Margaret Lloyd.

35. Archifdy Sir y Fflint/ Flintshire Record Office, D/DM/843.

36. In a further letter to me, dated 15 April, 1997, Mrs Mayer wrote of the Lloyd letters: ‘My husband acquired them from his maternal grandmother Mrs Howard Settle (nee Humphries). She had inherited them from her parents, the Humphries of Pare Arthur farm on the Hafod estate […] Apart from being farmers, I believe the Humphries acted as stewards to the Lloyds of Hafod.’

37. Since f in Welsh orthography represents a voiced consonant, efforts to anglicize (!) the name led to the form Hendrevigillt.

38. The dates are given in the notes on the family’s history left by William Lloyd, the painter’s son. He also observes that in V. Meozzi, Guida topografica della città di Livorno (Livorno: Meozzi, 1866), we find: ‘Lloyd, Tommaso e C. neg. piazza S. Marco 1. Lloyd, Guglielmo e C. neg. via Borra 12.’

39. I am indebted to the late Gwendolen Lloyd (1911—2001), the artist’s daughter, for a copy of this letter. The meaning of awen here is ‘poetic gift, genius or inspiration, the muse’ (GPC).

40. See note 6.

41. Information supplied by the Lloyd family.

42. Information supplied by the Lloyd family and by Lyndon Thomas, the present owner of Rhyd Alun. A poster advertising the sale of Hendrefigillt at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, London, on July 8, 1874, described it as being then a ‘fertile farm’ of’nearly 200 acres’. But it also emphasized the ‘rich and valuable mineral properties’: Hendre Lime Works and Quarry, Hendre Lead Mine, and Great Hendre Lead Mine (Flintshire Record Office, D/DM/200/1).

43. Flint Observer, 22 May 1884.

44. Information in the notes of William Lloyd. We can add that the 1881 census return for Rhyd Alun alleges that a boy called ‘Ferris’ lived there. But the fact that ‘Ferris’ was then ten years old and a British subject born in Italy makes it obvious that ‘Ferris’ was a mistake for Idris, who was born in 1871 in Livorno.

45. Information from the Lloyd family.

46. Llewelyn Lloyd, Tempi andati (Florence: Vallecchi, 1951), pp. 15—31.