Posted by Norena Shopland
Sarah Jane Rees (Cranogwen) loved Fanny Rees (1853-1874) a local milliner’s daughter. Like Cranogwen, Fanny rejected the feminine role expected of her and quit her job in the mills to become a writer under the bardic name of Phania. Twelve years after Fanny’s death Cranogwen wrote an essay in her magazine Y Frythones describing Fanny.
This is an online translated version, for the original Welsh click here.
“Now, at the end of the twelve years, I begin to plant flowers on our sister’s grave. We planned to do it sooner, but couldn’t immediately. If we were to do it soon, it would be very difficult not to act, how passionate we were, and how disappointed we were. And yet, we should have done before. We were so late, that it seemed as if we had forgotten, or been neglected. If I am seen, or somehow known some “went before,” we do not know what she thinks of us. And we are bound to it in many ways, and prove, it to which she was yet with us, an unusual attachment to her, and an admiration for her, strange that we seem to have neglected her memory for twelve years! It is unlikely that she would do so with our property, if this were the case. But, it wasn’t forgotten; it is true that a time-making difference, fades a little on the brink of nostalgia and relieves some of the hurt, but does not remove the impression; and the correct explanation is, it is a difficult job to treat the memories of our loved ones — it is a very, much easier, calmer, easier heart to turn to, and not look at the grave. It is easier to try for another to plant a flower, and to complain, and to rally, than to do it ourselves; at least that’s our experience, from which I also undergo pain relief all these years. Be that as it may, we must now mention something to our sister; the time for that, we don’t think, has come, and we must, if we can, also strive. Yes, the twelve years have passed! In the life of the young and old as well, that is a big piece, and it makes a big difference. Many of the young sisters, who, for the most part, don’t know who we are referring to; they do not remember “Phania,” and they may not have known anything about her. The old they may have forgotten. But, though taken from her at 2 years old, “Phania” was completely unknown to the world. Had she lived for years more (as we hope she would) she would have known more, and many could feel her worth, and receive merit from it. But “his thoughts were not his thoughts” on this as well. Our sister’s story that could be summarised into very few lines; her life was not long, nor a very full of circumstances; the meaning of her life and its objects, however, which we consider worth bearing in mind and keeping in mind. “Phania” was the daughter of a religious and responsible family in the Troedyraur, Ceredigion valley; she was born, we think, in the year 1853, and went away in the year 1874. She went to a common school, was well taught, and read disparagingly; she fulfilled herself like that and much knowledge. We can safely say that not many in her area were close to being equal to what she knew. She was also of a reflective and investigative tendency; many thought, and had a slow and mature opinion on all matters and cases known to her. We always felt privileged to hear what she said “Pan” about what, and how much she said. How polished she was in her words, and so cautious and slow in her remarks, so witty in her way, that it would always be a pleasure and a pleasure to hear her word and remark. Indeed, the judgment of one who was of age and senses, and the words of one well learned in expression, was always her property; and as many of us are devastated, we wonder when it comes. Gentle and shy, and our sister would always be of feeble health; yet she was prominent from the beginning, in Society, in Sunday School, and the Band of Hope. With the purposeful verse (strange but also strange), the lesson, and the passage to be recounted, there was hardly any like it. Her voice when she spoke was not loud, or very audible, but there was an intensity of feeling coming out, which always exerted influence, and proved that she was not ordinary. She started writing early in her life, I can’t remember how early, and wrote a lot. She kept records; she wrote essays, all are tests of a lively mind, well gestured to one in her age, and promising many in the future, if given advantages, and her life on earth extended. In the Magazine, the large Treasury, and most especially the Children’s Treasures, her writings appeared. She served at the mill until her early years; and though so somewhat addicted to work and duty, by being a member of a family of taste and support for her pure life and life, the father of the ordinary of the intellectual and the religious, also a member of a non-denominational church, she had much benefit in growing in the way that was good. In the year 1873, eager to obtain further education, and to present himself in some way, in some work she did not quite know which, to the world, she was dropped into the Capital for a school , where it was, for we shall not suppose, for nine months, where she made for herself many affectionate friends, and made all the progress that could be expected. Affliction and death came to the family at this time; that further rocked the foundations of her health, and depressed her spirit, that she would never have played freely in the joyful tone. She returned towards the end of the year. She was thinking about a future of work and responsibility, and service on earth — on, I don’t think, being told the truth about God and Christ somewhere yet unheard. But that was not the case; she failed from degree to degree, until she failed completely, and we escaped completely one Sunday evening in the early autumn of 1874. This was under the tutelage of the secretary of these lines, and yet to this day, considered a special favour by her to whom she is.
Some of the elements that formed her character and distinctiveness were strong common senses; pure tastes; a resignation for information; warm servility; outright self-denial; and deep religiosity; all that was very evident in her, and in all this, she was distinctly her father’s daughter. We do not presume that anyone saw or experienced a defect in any of these things; we certainly did not see ourselves. “Blame,” we know, it wasn’t, or “an oversight.” The only distant relation to that (if so, too) in it, was a measure of shyness, which might perhaps be counted on beyond what would be desirable and convenient of modesty. But that was only the natural illusion of life to set aside. Engaging in society, and engaging with the world more widely would take her to a table. Her ordinary senses were admirable; it would be difficult to get a better example. Her tastes were also strangely pure. Did anyone hear her say a disapproving or unkind word? I don’t think so; at least we didn’t hear anything coming, until a goal close to that. Seeking to know, and to know more, and to know better, was her youngest and all her intentions, that which she did to give herself, under the guise of her constitutional weakness, hours, if not nights of insomnia. Her parents, relatives, and friends she loved passionately. In that she was quite true, “Love is strong as death”; and left them in their twenty-first year — it was clearly an acute distress. Her religiosity no one doubted herself. Its chapel was its chapel and its service, and the Gospel and its ordinances. Surely she didn’t know, and didn’t want a different and better one; and love for God and Christ was the strong element of her most inner and spiritual life. It was not her property, however, that it was the privilege to be joyful and joyful in her religion; for she was dumb-minded, the greater the detail of most; so was her father; so he lived, and so she died. In wine then; and so did she, without much contentment with the covenant union with God, and with so little feeling of joy; but so pure in every sense, that when she was freed from the arm of the flesh, she could not but safely rise to the “land of the pure.” She has been there twelve years (measuring the earth), her father eleven, her other sisters, three more, more than that, and I wonder sometimes, and try to guess, where and how it is now, and how it is. “What we are is not yet revealed.” We plan to include extracts from her journals in our next issue.”
Source: Y Frythones, viii, No. 6, June 1886.
For the original magazine at The National Library of Wales, Welsh Journals, click here.