George Bowring - A Tale of Cader Idris | Page 2

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