THE WELSH SECONDARY SCHOOLS REVIEW.

Major Edgar Jones        In Memoriam

1868-1953

1885 Edgar Jones entered the college at Aberystwyth which throughout the rest of his life had his filial devotion—he became in 1901 president of its Old Students’ Association, an1 filled that office for the second time, exactly fifty years later. And appropriately enough, the honours conferred upon him by our University (he had been Warden of its Guild of Graduates in 1911-13) were both associated with his old college: the M.A. was given him in 1922 when that college celebrated its jubilee, and the LL.D. in 1951 graced his second presidency of its old students. His workaday degrees were obtained from the University of London. It is, I think, right to add that he was a man of very wide culture rather than of scholarship in the stricter sense.

After leaving college, he taught for a while at his old school, but in 1894 became the first headmaster of the new Intermediate School at Llandeilo-fawr. In 1899, however, began that distinguished headmastership at Barry which was to continue till his retirement in 1933. Some factors in that great success are obvious even to a man who never saw him at his work in school. There was the handsome and dignified presence—somehow, his later Territorial rank of ‘Major’ seemed to fit him exactly. There was the ringing yet kindly voice. His poetry-readings to his school have become almost a legend, as have his talks on art. A schoolmaster myself for many years, I have heard men wondering whether these deliveries answered their purpose. But does it matter much, whether all his auditors seized their opportunities? If even a few were quickened, that is as much— as most of us teachers can hope for, in all our lessons or lectures. May I say that I myself, who loathe ‘being read-to’, have never, in fifty-two years’ time, forgotten a poetry-reading of Viriamu Jones’s ?—Viriamu, by the way, was one of Edgar Jones’s heroes.

In lighter vein, one may smile on remembering that golden voice. When after his retirement Edgar Jones entered the Welsh Broadcasting service, all Wales came to know it. He would announce ‘y tywydd, a newyddion y dydd’; and the wintriest weather seemed to gain warmth and the most calamitous news to become almost tidings of comfort. It was not a voice to be hidden under a bushel, as the Committees of the University Board of Celtic Studies could testify. The Archaeology Committee, with Edgar Jones as Secretary, would be grouped at one end of the long table, while the History Committee gathered round the other end. Edgar Jones’s voice took no account of the imaginary barrier, and we historians were often in a daze, uncertain whether we were planning a new volume of records or voting a further sum of money for excavating Caerwent. But, to be serious once more, there was much more to it than a voice and a presence—these things will not of themselves make a man a brilliantly successful headmaster of a large school in a cosmopolitan dockyard town. Within the velvet glove there must have been an iron hand. By no one was Edgar Jones more profoundly admired than by his own pupils and colleagues.

I remember J. R. Roberts, a great headmaster if ever there was one, but a man who was not given to straying much outside his school grounds, saying ‘dear me----I wish I could keep up being so enthusiastic about everything, as Edgar does!’ The words ‘keep up’ will show that this was no criticism. Edgar Jones was indeed a most enthusiastic man, keen on a vast number of matters—his Territorial soldiering, adult education, music, art, literature, our colleges and our University. He had been a keen player of Association football in his younger days, and later on developed a great enthusiasm for the Rugby game. Was he not the man whom I asked to let me have a short list of really distinguished Welsh Rugby players who ought to be included in a biographical dictionary?—and did he not swamp me with a list of more than a hundred and twenty? He did his best for the encouragement of Welsh publishing, and had a good knowledge of our literature—a source of great pride to him was the presence on his staff of R. Williams Parry, and you will find in Dr. Parry’s recent volume an englyn on his old chief. To cut short this enumeration: Edgar Jones flung himself with a will into many a good cause outside his school work. He had long been a prominent figure in our courts and councils, and his geniality, his kindly smile, the warmth of his voice, made him an acceptable mediator in disagreements: ‘ille regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet’. Nowhere could you have found a more admirable example of ‘mwynder Maidwyn’.

His life must, one thinks, have been a happy life, at least until the tragic loss of his son in 1935—and he rallied bravely after that blow. We bid him a most affectionate farewell. Nor do we forget the gracious lady who for nearly sixty years shared his joy and his sorrow. To her, and to their two daughters, we proffer our respectful sympathy.

EDGAR JONES gan R. Williams Parry

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