Boxing Harry—Mr Bos—Black Robin—Drovers—Commercial Travellers.
I arrived at the hostelry of Mr Pritchard without meeting any adventure
worthy of being marked down. I went into the little parlour, and,
ringing the bell, was presently waited upon by Mrs Pritchard, a nice
matronly woman, whom I had not before seen, of whom I inquired what I
could have for dinner.
“This is no great place for meat,” said Mrs Pritchard, “that is fresh
meat, for sometimes a fortnight passes without anything being killed in
the neighbourhood. I am afraid at present there is not a bit of fresh
meat to be had. What we can get you for dinner I do not know, unless you
are willing to make shift with bacon and eggs.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said I, “I will have the bacon and eggs
with tea and bread-and-butter, not forgetting a pint of ale—in a word, I
will box Harry.”
“I suppose you are a commercial gent,” said Mrs Pritchard.
“Why do you suppose me a commercial gent?” said I. “Do I look one?”
“Can’t say you do much,” said Mrs Pritchard; “you have no rings on your
fingers, nor a gilt chain at your waistcoat-pocket, but when you said
‘box Harry,’ I naturally took you to be one of the commercial gents, for
when I was at Liverpool I was told that that was a word of theirs.”
“I believe the word properly belongs to them,” said I. “I am not one of
them; but I learnt it from them, a great many years ago, when I was much
amongst them. Those whose employers were in a small way of business, or
allowed them insufficient salaries, frequently used to ‘box Harry,’ that
is, have a beaf-steak, or mutton-chop, or perhaps bacon and eggs, as I am
going to have, along with tea and ale, instead of the regular dinner of a
commercial gentleman, namely, fish, hot joint, and fowl, pint of sherry,
tart, ale and cheese, and bottle of old port, at the end of all.”
Having made arrangements for “boxing Harry” I went into the tap-room,
from which I had heard the voice of Mr Pritchard proceeding during the
whole of my conversation with his wife. Here I found the worthy landlord
seated with a single customer; both were smoking. The customer instantly
arrested my attention. He was a man, seemingly about forty years of age
with a broad red face, with certain somethings, looking very much like
incipient carbuncles, here and there, upon it. His eyes were grey and
looked rather as if they squinted; his mouth was very wide, and when it
opened displayed a set of strong, white, uneven teeth. He was dressed in
a pepper-and-salt coat of the Newmarket cut, breeches of corduroy and
brown top boots, and had on his head a broad, black, coarse, low-crowned
hat. In his left hand he held a heavy whale-bone whip with a brass head.
I sat down on a bench nearly opposite to him and the landlord.
“Well,” said Mr Pritchard; “did you find your way to Llanfair?”
“Yes,” said I.
“And did you execute the business satisfactorily which led you there?”
said Mr Pritchard.
“Perfectly,” said I.
“Well, what did you give a stone for your live pork?” said his companion
glancing up at me, and speaking in a gruff voice.
“I did not buy any live pork,” said I; “do you take me for a pig-jobber?”
“Of course,” said the man, in pepper-and-salt; “who but a pig jobber
could have business at Llanfair?”
“Does Llanfair produce nothing but pigs?” said I.
“Nothing at all,” said the man in the pepper-and-salt, “that is, nothing
worth mentioning. You wouldn’t go there for runts, that is, if you were
in your right senses; if you were in want of runts you would have gone to
my parish and have applied to me, Mr Bos; that is if you were in your
senses. Wouldn’t he, John Pritchard?”
Mr Pritchard thus appealed to took the pipe out of his mouth, and with
some hesitations said that he believed the gentleman neither went to
Llanfair for pigs nor black cattle but upon some particular business.
“Well,” said Mr Bos, “it may be so, but I can’t conceive how any person,
either gentle or simple, could have any business in Anglesey save that
business was pigs or cattle.”
“The truth is,” said I, “I went to Llanfair to see the birth-place of a
great man—the cleverest Anglesey ever produced.”
“Then you went wrong,” said Mr Bos, “you went to the wrong parish, you
should have gone to Penmynnydd; the clebber man of Anglesey was born and
buried at Penmynnydd, you may see his tomb in the church.”
“You are alluding to Black Robin,” said I, “who wrote the ode in praise
of Anglesey—yes, he was a very clever young fellow, but excuse me, he was
not half such a poet as Gronwy Owen.”
“Black Robin,” said Mr Bos, “and Gronow Owen, who the Devil were they? I
never heard of either. I wasn’t talking of them, but of the clebberest
man the world ever saw. Did you never hear of Owen Tiddir? If you
didn’t, where did you get your education?”
“I have heard of Owen Tudor,” said I, “but never understood that he was
particularly clever; handsome he undoubtedly was—but clever—”
“How not clebber?” interrupted Mr Bos. “If he wasn’t clebber, who was
clebber? Didn’t he marry a great queen, and was not Harry the Eighth his
great grandson?”
“Really,” said I, “you know a great deal of history.”
“I should hope I do,” said Mr Bos. “Oh, I wasn’t at school at Blewmaris
for six months for nothing; and I haven’t been in Northampton, and in
every town in England, without learning something of history. With
regard to history I may say that few—Won’t you drink?” said he,
patronizingly, as he pushed a jug of ale which stood before him on a
little table towards me.
Begging politely to be excused on the plea that I was just about to take
tea, I asked him in what capacity he had travelled all over England.
“As a drover to be sure,” said Mr Bos, “and I may say that there are not
many in Anglesey better known in England than myself—at any rate I may
say that there is not a public-house between here and Worcester at which
I am not known.”
“Pray excuse me,” said I, “but is not droving rather a low-lifed
occupation?”
“Not half so much as pig-jobbing,” said Bos, “and that that’s your trade
I am certain, or you would never have gone to Llanfair.”
“I am no pig-jobber,” said I, “and when I asked you that question about
droving, I merely did so because one Ellis Wynn, in a book he wrote,
gives the drovers a very bad character, and puts them in Hell for their
mal-practices.”
“Oh, he does,” said Mr Bos, “well, the next time I meet him at Corwen
I’ll crack his head for saying so. Mal-practices—he had better look at
his own, for he is a pig-jobber too. Written a book has he? then I
suppose he has been left a legacy, and gone to school after middle-age,
for when I last saw him, which is four years ago, he could neither read
nor write.”
I was about to tell Mr Bos that the Ellis Wynn that I meant was no more a
pig-jobber than myself, but a respectable clergyman, who had been dead
considerably upwards of a hundred years, and that also, notwithstanding
my respect for Mr Bos’s knowledge of history, I did not believe that Owen
Tudor was buried at Penmynnydd, when I was prevented by the entrance of
Mrs Pritchard, who came to inform me that my repast was ready in the
other room, whereupon I got up and went into the parlour to “box Harry.”
Having dispatched my bacon and eggs, tea and ale, I fell into deep
meditation. My mind reverted to a long past period of my life, when I
was to a certain extent fixed up with commercial travellers, and had
plenty of opportunities of observing their habits, and the terms employed
by them in conversation. I called up several individuals of the two
classes into which they used to be divided, for commercial travellers in
my time were divided into two classes, those who ate dinners and drank
their bottle of port, and those who “boxed Harry.” What glorious fellows
the first seemed! What airs they gave themselves! What oaths they
swore! and what influence they had with hostlers and chambermaids! and
what a sneaking-looking set the others were! shabby in their apparel; no
fine ferocity in their countenances; no oaths in their mouths, except
such a trumpery apology for an oath as an occasional “confounded hard;”
with little or no influence at inns, scowled at by hostlers, and never
smiled at by chambermaids—and then I remembered how often I had bothered
my head in vain to account for the origin of the term “box Harry,” and
how often I had in vain applied both to those who did box and to those
who did not “box Harry,” for a clear and satisfactory elucidation of the
expression—and at last found myself again bothering my head as of old in
a vain attempt to account for the origin of the term “boxing Harry.”