When I was a young man, and full of spirits, some forty years ago or
more, I lost my best and truest friend in a very sad and mysterious way.
The greater part of my life has been darkened by this heavy blow and
loss, and the blame which I poured upon myself for my own share in the
matter.
George Bowring had been seven years with me at the fine old school of
Shrewsbury, and trod on my heels from form to form so closely that, when
I became at last the captain of the school, he was second to me. I was
his elder by half a year, and “sapped” very hard, while he laboured
little; so that it will be plain at a glance, although he never
acknowledged it, that he was the better endowed of the two with natural
ability. At that time we of Salop always expected to carry everything,
so far as pure scholarship was concerned, at both the universities. But
nowadays I am grieved to see that schools of quite a different stamp
(such as Rugby and Harrow, and even Marlborough, and worse of all
peddling Manchester) have been running our boys hard, and sometimes
almost beating them. And how have they done it? Why, by purchasing
masters of our prime rank and special style.
George and myself were at one time likely, and pretty well relied upon,
to keep up the fame of Sabrina's crown, and hold our own at Oxford. But
suddenly it so fell out that both of us were cut short of classics, and
flung into this unclassic world. In the course of our last half year at
school and when we were both taking final polish to stand for Balliol
scholarships, which we were almost sure to win, as all the examiners
were Shrewsbury men,--not that they would be partial to us, but because
we knew all their questions,--within a week, both George and I were
forced to leave the dear old school, the grand old town, the lovely
Severn, and everything but one another.
He lost his father; I lost my uncle, a gentleman in Derbyshire, who had
well provided my education; but, having a family of his own, could not
be expected to leave me much. And he left me even less than could, from
his own point of view, have been rational. It is true that he had seven
children; but still a man of,£15,000 a year might have done, without
injustice--or, I might say, with better justice--something more than
to leave his nephew a sum which, after much pushing about into divers
insecurities, fetched £72 10s. per annum.
Nevertheless, I am truly grateful; though, perhaps, at the time I had
not that knowledge of the world which enlarges the grateful organs. It
cannot matter what my feelings were, and I never was mercenary. All my
sentiments at that period ran in Greek senarii; and perhaps it would
show how good and lofty boys were in that ancient time, though now they
are only rude Solecists, if I were to set these verses down--but, after
much consideration, I find it wiser to keep them in.
George Bowring's father had some appointment well up in the Treasury.
He seems to have been at some time knighted for finding a manuscript of
great value that went in the end to the paper mills. How he did it, or
what it was, or whether he ever did it at all, were questions for no
one to meddle with. People in those days had larger minds than they
ever seem to exhibit now. The king might tap a man, and say, “Rise, Sir
Joseph,” and all the journals of the age, or, at least, the next day,
would echo “Sir Joseph!” And really he was worthy of it. A knight he
lived, and a knight he died; and his widow found it such a comfort!
And now on his father's sudden death, George Bowring was left not
so very well off. Sir Joseph had lived, as a knight should do, in a
free-handed, errant, and chivalrous style; and what he left behind
him made it lucky that the title dropped. George, however, was better
placed, as regards the world, than I was; but not so very much as to
make a difference between us. Having always held together, and being
started in life together, we resolved to face the world (as other people
are always called) side by side, and with a friendship that should make
us as good as one.
This, however, did not come out exactly as it should have done. Many
things arose between us--such as diverse occupation, different hours of
work and food, and a little split in the taste of trowsers, which, of
course, should not have been. He liked the selvage down his legs,
while I thought it unartistic, and, going much into the graphic line, I
pressed my objections strongly.
But George, in the handsomest manner--as now, looking back on the case,
I acknowledge--waived my objections, and insisted as little as he could
upon his own.
And again we became as tolerant as any two men, at all alike, can be of
one another.
He, by some postern of influence, got into some dry ditch of the
Treasury, and there, as in an old castle-moat, began to be at home, and
move, gently and after his seniors, as the young ducks follow the old
ones. And at every waddle he got more money.
My fortune, however, was not so nice. I had not Sir Joseph, of Treasury
cellars, to light me with his name and memory into a snug cell of my
own. I had nothing to look to but courage, and youth, and education, and
three-quarters of a hundred pounds a year, with some little change to
give out of it. Yet why should I have doubted? Now, I wonder at my own
misgivings; yet all of them still return upon me, if I ever am persuaded
just to try Welsh rabbit. Enough, that I got on at last, to such an
extent that the man at the dairy offered me half a year's milk for a
sketch of a cow that had never belonged to him.
George, meanwhile, having something better than a brush for a walking
stick and an easel to sit down upon, had taken unto himself a wife--a
lady as sweet and bright as could be--by name Emily Atkinson. In truth,
she was such a charming person that I myself, in a quiet way, had taken
a very great fancy to her before George Bowring saw her; but as soon as
I found what a desperate state the heart of poor George was reduced to,
and came to remember that he was fitted by money to marry, while I was
not, it appeared to me my true duty toward the young lady and him, and
even myself, to withdraw from the field, and have nothing to say if they
set up their horses together.
So George married Emily, and could not imagine why it was that I strove
in vain to appear as his “best man,” at the rails where they do it.
For though I had ordered a blue coat and buttons, and a cashmere
waistcoat (amber-coloured, with a braid of peonies), yet at the last
moment my courage failed me, and I was caught with a shivering in the
knees, which the doctor said was ague. This and that shyness of dining
at his house (which I thought it expedient to adopt during the years of
his married life) created some little reserve between us, though
hardly so bad as our first disagreement concerning the stripe down the
pantaloons.
However, before that dereliction I had made my friend a wedding present,
as was right and proper--a present such as nothing less than a glorious
windfall could have enabled me to buy. For while engaged, some three
years back, upon a grand historical painting of “Cour de Lion and
Saladin,” now to be seen--but let that pass; posterity will always know
where to find it--I was harassed in mind perpetually concerning the
grain of the fur of a cat. To the dashing young artists of the present
day this may seem a trifle; to them, no doubt, a cat is a cat--or would
be, if they could make it one. Of course, there are cats enough in
London, and sometimes even a few to spare; but I wanted a cat of
peculiar order, and of a Saracenic cast. I walked miles and miles;
till at last I found him residing in a very old-fashioned house in the
Polygon, at Somers Town. Here was a genuine paradise of cats, carefully
ministered to and guarded by a maiden lady of Portuguese birth and of
advanced maturity. Each of these nine cats possessed his own stool--a
mahogany stool, with a velvet cushion, and his name embroidered upon it
in beautiful letters of gold. And every day they sat round the fire to
digest their dinners, all nine of them, each on his proper stool,
some purring, some washing their faces, and some blinking or nodding
drowsily. But I need not have spoken of this, except that one of
them was called “Saladin.” He was the very cat I wanted. I made his
acquaintance in the area, and followed it up on the knife-boy's board.
And then I had the most happy privilege of saving him from a tail-pipe.
Thus my entrance was secured into this feline Eden; and the lady was
so well pleased that she gave me an order for nine full-length cat
portraits, at the handsome price of ten guineas apiece. And not only
this, but at her demise--which followed, alas! too speedily--she left me
£150, as a proof of her esteem and affection.
This sum I divided into three equal parts--fifty pounds for a present
for George, another fifty for a duty to myself, and the residue to be
put by for any future purposes. I knew that my friend had no gold watch;
neither, of course, did I possess one. In those days a gold watch
was thought a good deal of, and made an impression in society, as a
three-hundred-guinea ring does now. Barwise was then considered the best
watchmaker in London, and perhaps in the world. So I went to his shop,
and chose two gold watches of good size and substance--none of your
trumpery catchpenny things, the size of a gilt pill trodden upon--at the
price of fifty guineas each. As I took the pair, the foreman let me have
them for a hundred pounds, including also in that figure a handsome gold
key for each, of exactly the same pattern, and a guard for the fob of
watered black-silk ribbon.
My reason for choosing these two watches, out of a trayful of similar
quality, was perhaps a little whimsical--viz., that the numbers they
bore happened to be sequents. Each had its number engraved on its white
enamel dial, in small but very clear figures, placed a little above the
central spindle; also upon the extreme verge, at the nadir below the
seconds hand, the name of the maker, “Barwise, London.” They were not
what are called “hunting watches,” but had strong and very clear lunette
glasses fixed in rims of substantial gold. And their respective numbers
were 7777 and 7778.
Carrying these in wash-leather bags, I gave George Bowring his choice
of the two; and he chose the one with four figures of seven, making some
little joke about it, not good enough to repeat, nor even bad enough to
laugh at.