Welsh Journals

THE WELSH VICTORIAN CITY: THE MIDDLE CLASS AND CIVIC AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN CARDIFF, 1850-19141 places which were a few years ago but insignificant villages have sprung into what may fairly be called populous towns, so far as houses and people can make them so. Cardiff Times, 25 August 1860 IT has become a commonplace in the study of cities to note that the words 'city' and 'civilization' derive from a common Latin root, civis. In the nineteenth century this connection was less frequently made- urbanity, indeed, could seem to be the antithesis of civilization. In the course of industrialization, an intellectual tradition emerged that is built on the criticism of what Raymond Williams has called 'the bourgeois idea of society'. Matthew Arnold, in particular, assaulted aristocratic barbarism and bourgeois philistinism in his quest for 'sweetness and light'. Civic leaders were obviously stung by these attacks and urgent attempts were made to create the appropriate attitudes and institutions for an urban civilization. Sanitation, town halls, parks, art galleries, museums, libraries, universities and many other cultural institutions were part of the quest, and often the questers drew sustenance from a vision of the glorious urban past of Renaissance Italy or the Low Countries. Asa Briggs has argued that these developments saved the Victorian city from degenerating into the 'manheaps' of Mumfordian imagination. Victorian Cardiff faced these issues in an acute and complex form. As the epigraph demonstrates, the sense of the lack of civic traditions was pressing. Cardiff seemed peculiarly ill-prepared for the cultural and civic challenges of growth. Such unpreparedness was not entirely a matter of social structure and institutions, but also one of attitudes and vision. In explaining the I am grateful to Jon Parry, Michael Simpson, David Smith, Peter Stead and John Williams for their advice and encouragement with this article. Martin Daunton and John Davies have given me more stimulus and references than anyone could hope for. An earlier version was circulated as part of Coleg Harlech Occasional papers in Welsh Studies, No. 1, under the title "Wharf Gentry" and "the Welsh Metropolis": Middle Class Civic and National Consciousness in Cardiff, 1850-1914'. This version is largely rewritten, restructured and incorporates subsequent research; some detail in the earlier version is omitted here. 2 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (London, 1958; Penguin ed., 1961), pp. 314 and passim. H. E. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, 1870-1914 (London, 1976), pp. 6-10, 48-51 and passim; A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (London, 1963;- Penguin ed., 1968), pp. 24 and passim; L. Mumford, The City in History (London, 1961; Penguin ed., 1966).