The bad effects of scholarship among servants. The opinions of a fine
lady on the subject. A horse milliner. Jack o Sîr Gâr, a very original
character. His manufacture and merchandize. His tender interview with
Catti. A suspicion of her coquettings.
PERHAPS our modern governesses who possess the vain accomplishment of
reading and writing, may feel disposed to undervalue the acquirements of
our rural Welsh governess. But let them not triumph; and be it
recollected that tastes differ, and that many of our living patricians,
as well as wealthy plebians, who are considered the great, the mighty,
and the respectable of the land, deprecate with becoming vehemence the
prevailing mania for educating the poor. We have heard ladies, and great
ones too, attired in silks and velvets, pall and purple, and “that fared
sumptuously every day,” declare most positively they never knew a servant
good for anything, that could read and write. No sooner were they
capable of wielding a goose quill, than the impudent hussies presumed to
have a will of their own, and in their opinions mounted a step nearer to
the altitude of their mistresses. And on men, they said, education had a
worse effect, as thereby they became the idle readers of books, and
newspapers, which made them saucy to their superiors, and sometimes the
most villainous cut-throat radicals. Now it will be readily admitted, we
should think, that there was but little danger of Catti’s scholars ever
becoming such pernicious characters; and therefore, let not illiberal
envy withhold from her the well-merited meed of applause. Alas for the
good old days—we see no such schoolmistresses now-a-days! those days of
the golden age of simplicity are gone for ever. Days approved of by the
great, and therefore good; when the humbler sons of industry looked up to
them as gods, and they returned the compliment by looking down on their
worshippers as good and well-taught dogs, that earned their bones and
scraps.—Days when country squires handled a pitchfork better than a
pen—when good boys learnt their catechism and read their bible against
their will, and forgot it as soon as possible after leaving school.—Days
when “simplicity and harmlessness” were the names that dignified boorish
ignorance and passive stupidity—when a sycophantic subserviency paved the
way to wealth and honors—when the gross vice of manly independence was
unknown, and no class acknowledged among men, but the high and low, or
the rich and poor.—Days that—(to finish this retrospective eulogy,) that,
alas! are no more.
Although our hero’s mother could not be called a woman of letters, she
certainly possessed qualities more original than generally fell to the
lot of persons in her station. At carding wool or spinning it, knitting
stockings or mittins, the most envious admitted her superiority to every
woman in Tregaron. She moreover had gained no small consideration in
another character, which her jealous neighbours satirically denominated a
hedge milliner, whose province it was to make hedging gloves and coarse
frocks for ploughmen, to darn the heels of their stout woollen stockings,
and also to make and mend horses’ collars; the latter branch of her
occupation, which required a delicate hand to cut the slender sewing
thongs from the raw bull hides, caused her to be called a horse milliner,
which after all, was not much more applicable than if she had been
described as a bull tailor. This malignant waggery, however, was unable
to disturb the tranquil soul of Catti; she loved horses, and in her
juvenile days had often whiled away her mornings and evenings in the
rural pastimes driving of them, both in the plough and barrow, while
carolling some rural ditty, till the rocks and mountains echoed with the
cadence of her harmony.
It will not be a matter of much wonder that with all these
accomplishments Catti should be importuned in the way of courtship,
notwithstanding the injury her fame had suffered from the adventure with
Sir John Wynne. But the schoolmistress, elated with the success of her
academy, turned a deaf ear to all the praises and protestations of the
swains, until, as the village sages say, the right man came. Like all
her amiable sex, she professed the utmost abhorrence of mercenary motives
in marriage, though many insinuated that she learnt the value of property
from never having possessed any. It was observed that she treated with
indifference, if not aversion, those unprofitable lovers who had nothing
but their goodly persons to recommend them. Certain inuendoes were even
thrown out respecting a suspicion of her coquettings with one of the most
ugly, miserly, and repulsive of clowns;—one who was not only a clown, but
a red-haired one;—not only red haired, but knock-kneed;—not only
knock-kneed, but squint-eyed;—not only squint-eyed, but a woman-hater;
and worse than all, a foreigner!—being a native of a distant part of the
adjoining county of Carmarthen, and known only by the nick-name of Jack o
Sîr Gâr, or Carmarthenshire Jack. This amiable and interesting personage
certainly possessed all those graces here enumerated, with many others,
which were attached to peculiarities of character that rendered him so
far like our great national hero Owen Glendower, that he “was not in the
roll of common men.” He was at this time the chief husbandman and
bailiff at the squire’s, an office which, as he had others under his
command, did not aid his personal recommendations to much popularity in
the squire’s kitchen. Perhaps no being that ever breathed had so fair an
excuse for becoming a misanthrope. His coarse and repulsive exterior,
with his churlish manners, and one unchangeable suit of old patched
ill-looking clothes, combined to make him an object of distaste to the
girls, to whom, and the young men, he became a general butt of ridicule
yet only among themselves, for they were fully aware, that it would be a
less dangerous experiment to catch a mad bull by the horns, than to rouse
the choler of Jack o Sîr Gâr. The standing jest against him was, his
qualifications as a trencherman, and his reputation as a “huge feeder”
was certainly unrivalled. As there was not a single pastime under the
head of amusement, that the ingenuity of man has ever devised for the
entertainment of his fellows, save eating, that possessed a charm for
him, it might be expected that this solitary recreation would be indulged
in the proportion that he excluded all others. He not only performed all
the functions of the gross glutton, but as the actors say, “looked the
character” to perfection.
The reader, measuring him by other men, would make a very erroneous guess
on the most prominent feature of his face, if he fixed on the nasal
protuberance—no such thing—his nose was flat and small, but his large
projecting upper teeth, like “rocks of peril jutting o’er the sea,” were
ever bared for action, white as those of his only companion, the mastiff,
and nobly independent of a sheathing lip.
Others more comely features might wear,
But Jack was famed for his white teeth bare.
As the squire’s lady was not the most liberal in supplying the servants’
table, those wags, male or female, who were in the habit of committing
the silent satire of mimickry against Jack, were soon taught a severe
lesson at the expence of their bowels. It was discovered that, whenever
enraged at their treatment, instead of spending his breath in vain
reproaches, or taking to the more violent proceeding of fisty-cuffs, Jack
revenged himself by eating most outrageously, so that the scoffers,
deprived of their shares, often found their stomachs minus. His power of
mastication increased with his anger; and the flaming energy that was
mentally inciting him to give an enemy a fierce facer, or a destructive
cross-buttock, was diverted from his knuckles to his teeth; and in every
mouthful which he ground in his relentless mill, he felt the glowing
satisfaction of having annihilated a foe. Woe to those who were his next
neighbours at table, and sat too close to his elbows at those hours of
excitement; sly punches in the ribs, as if by accident, were among the
slightest consequences; and those who were thus taught manners, to keep
at a respectful distance, declared that the fear they entertained was
only of his knife. That, it is true, was saying too much; Jack had no
such bloody propensities, although the glare of his unequal eyes was
enough, when much annoyed, to frighten them into such conclusions.
Although a most unseemly clown, his worst enemies would confess that,
unprovoked, he was a very harmless man. Squire Graspacre knew his value
as a faithful and industrious servant, and therefore disregarded the
constant tattle about his repulsive peculiarities.
Before methodism spread its puritanic gloom over Wales, and identified
itself almost with the Welsh character, mirth and minstrelsy, dance and
song, emulative games and rural pastimes, were the order of the day; and,
as the country people worked hard all the week, it must be confessed that
these sports often infringed upon the sanctity of the sabbath. Sundays
were often entirely spent in dancing, wrestling, and kicking the
foot-ball. The latter violent exercise, at this time prevalent in
Cardiganshire, was performed in large parties of village against village,
and parish against parish, when the country brought together its mass of
population either to partake in the glories of the game, or to enjoy the
success of their friends, as spectators. On these occasions Carmarthen
Jack loved to be present, but only as a spectator, as he was never known
to take a part in any game. While others were panting with the rough
exercise, swearing at disappointments, hallooing their triumph, or
wincing over a broken shin, Jack would be found seated on some rising
tump that overlooked the field, busily employed with a scooping knife,
hollowing out the bowls of spoons and ladles, or shaping out soles for
wooden shoes, which at every moment that he could call his own, he
manufactured out of the logs of birch, or more frequently alder, with
which he amply provided himself during the week, and stored under his bed
to dry. At fairs also, Carmarthen Jack would be equally punctual, and
after having done his master’s business of buying or selling a horse or
so, would be seen with a load of the merchandize of his own manufacture,
wooden spoons, ladles, and clog soles, in abundance, which drew about him
all the rural housekeepers far and near. “No milliner could suit her
customers with gloves” in greater variety than Jack with spoons to please
his purchasers. He had spoons for man, woman, and child, fashioned for
every sort of mouth, from the tiny infant’s to the shark-jaws of the
hungry ploughman, which, like his own, presented a gap from ear to ear.
He had spoons for use, and spoons for ornament, the latter, meant to keep
company with the showy polished pewter, were made of box or yew, highly
polished and curiously carved with divers characters, principally suns,
moons, stars, hearts transfixt with the dart of cupid, and sometimes a
hen and chickens, which hieroglyphics of his own for fear of their being
mistaken for a cat and mice, with other such misconstructions, Jack
always explained at the time of bargaining, without any extra charge.
Nothing could more emphatically prove the excellency of Jack’s wares,
than the circumstance of his being personally unpopular among the women,
and yet his wares in the highest esteem. The frowns of the fair, which
threw a gloom on the sunshine of his days, may be traced to a source not
at all dishonorable to him. The girls at the squire’s had played him so
many tricks, that once, in the height of aggravation, Jack declared war
against the whole sex, devoting to the infernal gods every creature that
wore a petticoat, and vowing, from that day forward, that not one of the
proscribed race should ever enter his room, which was romantically
situated over the stable, with its glassless window commanding a full
view of both the pigsty and dunghill. The consequence of this terrific
vow caused him, at first, some trouble, as, to keep it he was obliged
thenceforward to be his own chambermaid, lawndress, and sempstress,
offices that accorded ill with his previous habits. The laudable
firmness of his nature, however, soon overcame these petty difficulties;
and so far was he from backsliding from his previous determination, that
he vowed to throw through the window the first woman who entered his
chamber, which the satirical hussies called his den—a threat which
effectually secured him from further intrusion. Sometimes, indeed, when
he would be sitting at the door of the cowhouse, or the stable, listening
to the rural sounds of cackling geese and grunting pigs, while darning
his hose or patching his leather breeches, or treading his shirt in the
brook by way of washing it, these eternal plagues of his, the girls,
would be seen and heard behind the covert of a wall or hedge, smothering
their tittering, which at last would burst out, in spite of suppression,
into a loud horse laugh, when one and all, they would take to their
heels, while Jack amused himself by valiantly pelting their rear, in
their precipitate retreat, with clods of earth, small stones, or anything
that came in his way. Jack o Sîr Gâr, however, in time gained the
reputation of being rich, by the success of his wooden-ware merchandize,
and consequently one of the fair ones who had once been his tormentor,
became suddenly enamoured of him, and incessantly endeavoured to gain his
good will; but being one day thrown headlong out of the window into the
dunghill below, as a gentle hint that she was not wanted, her milk of
tenderness was turned into gall, and she became revengeful as a tigress.
The first act of her resentment was to spread about the insidious report
that Jack o Sîr Gâr was a woman-hater—an insinuation that at first rather
preyed on his mind, as he dreaded the effect such an unmerited stigma
would have upon his private trade. But innocence is ever predestined to
an ultimate triumph; and an event soon happened that proved the falsehood
of those prevalent tales to his discredit, and convinced his greatest
foes that he possessed a heart, if not overflowing with human charity, at
least penetrable to the blandishments of beauty, and quick with
sensibility to female merit.
On one auspicious market-day, Carmarthen Jack appeared in the street of
Tregaron where the market is held, loaded with his usual merchandize,
which he spread on the ground, and sat beside them; but not meeting with
a ready sale, and disdaining even momentary idleness, began with
earnestness to cut and scoop away at a piece of alder, gradually forming
it into a huge ladle, to correspond with the largest size three-legged
iron pot. On this eventful morning Catti had occasion to perambulate the
fair, to purchase a new ladle, her cross-grained sister having broken the
old one, by thumping with it on the back of an overgrown hog, whose
foraging propensities led it to investigate the recesses of the
school-room. The reputation of Jack’s ware, and the general supposition
that he had saved money, soon reached the ears of our prudent
schoolmistress; and the pardonable ambition of wishing to conquer the
stern heart of one who despised her whole sex was supposed to be the
secret object of her present walk; and evil tongues were not wanting, to
insinuate that she broke the ladle herself, which was only cracked
before, for an excuse to introduce herself to Jack o Sîr Gâr, by buying
another. Be that as it may, she sought and found him in the fair, and
fell in love with him and his ladle at the same instant. After an effort
to conquer her native bashfulness, and to look as lovely as possible, she
accosted him with such uncommon civility as utterly astounded the poor
clownish misanthropic bachelor. She examined the ladle in his hand, and
though not half finished, declared it the handsomest ever her eyes
beheld, and paid for it without seeking the least abatement in the price.
Jack gaped at her, with open mouth and staring eyes, and thought her a
very interesting woman, though his first impression was, that she was
mad, as he had asked double the real selling price, on purpose to abate
one half, according to a custom immemorial in Welsh dealings. She next
purchased half a dozen common birch-wood spoons, and as many ornamental
ones made of box, to adorn her shelf, and, as before, paid him his own
price. Jack thought her very lovely, and when she made another purchase
of a pair of clog soles, quite irresistible!—her ready money opened his
heart like the best manufactured key, and he was almost ready to offer
them as a present, but for a fear of wounding her delicacy. As she found
he had no further variety, she ordered half a dozen more common spoons,
and Jack, with all the amiability that he could possibly throw into his
hard features, presented her with one of his most finished articles of
box. She received it with that peculiar smile with which a lady accepts
a welcome love-token, and replied in the softest tone imaginable, “indeed
I will keep it for your sake John bach!”—Jack had nothing to do but
wonder—he never had been called John in his life before; at any other
time he would have thought she mocked him—and the endearing term of
“bach” too, was equally new to his ears, which seemed to grow longer as
they tingled with the grateful sound. This interesting scene was closed
by Catti’s asking him to her house to partake of a dinner of flummery and
milk, which he accepted with the best grace imaginable, and trudged off
with his wares on his back and dangling from his arms and button holes;
and thus gallanting her in the most amatory style, he walked by her side
to Llidiard y Ffynnon. Unaccustomed to kindness in either word or deed,
poor Jack o Sîr Gâr met her condescensions and advances with a sheepish
sort of gratitude. A cordial invitation on the part of Catti to repeat
his visit as soon, and as often, as possible, affected him almost to
tears; and as a proof of his unbounded confidence, he left in her care
his whole stock of ready-made spoons and ladles, and almost blubbered
when he shook her hand at parting.
As a proof of the beneficial effect of kindness on a churlish nature, and
the contrary, of ridicule and persecution, we need but contrast this
rugged man’s previous character and conduct with what followed, after the
tenderness of Catti had melted the frost of misanthropy which formed a
crusty coat round his heart. The adventure of the day produced a most
extraordinary revolution in his habits. None of the servants at the
hall, male or female, could conceive what it portended, when Jack
condescended to ask one of his fellow husbandmen to trim his hair; and
while the fellow clipped his rough red locks with his sheep-sheers, he
was surprized at his questions about the price of a new pair of leathern
breeches, and a red neck-cloth. Greater still was the astonishment of
the whole house when, in a few days after, he appeared in those very
buckish articles of dress, and while he thought nobody saw him,
endeavouring to cut a dancing caper on the green, which they mistook for
an imitation of a frisky bullock. His walking as well as dancing steps,
were now watched; and when it was found that the former led to the house
of Catti, the nods, winks, horse-laughs, and innuendoes, mentioned in the
commencement of this chapter, took place, and gave food for scandal to
the whole gossiping circle of the town of Tregaron and its vicinity for
many miles around.
Flummery and milk, named here as the food on which these lovers regaled
themselves, has been considered in Wales a very popular national mess,
common, but still a favorite among high and low, and might be seen on the
board of the lord lieutenant of the county, as well as on that of the
humblest cottager. The lofty of the land whose pampered stomachs have
turned with loathing from more dainty food in sultry seasons, have
welcomed the simplicity of milk and flummery, as the advocate of native
charms would greet the smilings of a rustic beauty, when the meretricious
fair of fashion would be passed by, neglected. The English reader will
not be offended if I dilate a little in praise of my favorite food, while
I explain to him its nature; and if he is a bloated son of affluence,
overflowing with bile and spleen, he will thank us, after adopting our
recommendation of feeding on it often during his rustication among our
mountains. Medical men also recommend it as very effective in promoting
an increase of good clear healthy blood. Flummery is made of the inner
hulls of ground oats, when sifted from the meal, some of which still
adheres to it, by soaking it in water till it acquires a slight taste of
acidity, when it is strained through a hair sieve and boiled till it
becomes a perfect jelly. When poured from that picturesque prince of
culinary vessels, the large three-legged iron pot, into a vast brown
earthen dish, it presents a smooth smiling aspect of the most winning
equanimity, till destroyed by the numerous invading spoons of the
company, that plunge a portion of it, scalding hot, into their bowls of
cool milk. Thus much of its descriptive history is given, to illustrate
the following ode in its immortal praise, with which we shall now close
this long chapter.