George Bowring - A Tale of Cader Idris | Page 4

much as forty. She had made a point of insisting upon
a brisket of beef and a flat-polled cabbage for dinner every Saturday;
and the same, with a "cowcumber," cold on Sunday; and for supper a
soft-roed herring, ever since her widowhood.
"Mrs. Whitehead," said I--for that was her name, though she said she
did not deserve it; and her hair confirmed her in that position by
growing darker from year to year--"Madam, allow me to beg you to
vary your diet a little at this sad time."
"I varies it every day, Mr. Bistre," she answered somewhat snappishly.
"The days of the week is not so many but what they all come round
again."
For the moment I did not quite perceive the precision of her argument;

but after her death I was able to do more justice to her intellect. And,
unhappily, she was removed to a better world on the following Sunday.
To a man in London of quiet habits and regular ways and periods there
scarcely can be a more desperate blow than the loss of his landlady. It
is not only that his conscience pricks him for all his narrow, plagiaristic,
and even irrational suspicions about the low level of his tea caddy, or a
neap tide in his brandy bottle, or any false evidence of the eyes (which
ever go spying to lock up the heart), or the ears, which are also wicked
organs--these memories truly are grievous to him, and make him yearn
now to be robbed again; but what he feels most sadly is the desolation
of having nobody who understands his locks. One of the best men I
ever knew was so plagued with his sideboard every day for two years,
after dinner, that he married a little new maid-of-all-work--because she
was a blacksmith's daughter.
Nothing of that sort, however, occurred in my case, I am proud to say.
But finding myself in a helpless state, without anyone to be afraid of, I
had only two courses before me: either to go back to my former
landlady (who was almost too much of a Tartar, perhaps), or else to run
away from my rooms till Providence provided a new landlady.
Now, in this dilemma I met George Bowring, who saw my distress, and
most kindly pressed me to stay at his house till some female arose to
manage my affairs for me. This, of course, I declined to do, especially
under present circumstances; and, with mutual pity, we parted. But the
very next day he sought me out, in a quiet nook where a few good
artists were accustomed to meet and think; and there he told me that
really now he saw his way to cut short my troubles as well as his own,
and to earn a piece of enjoyment and profit for both of us. And I
happen to remember his very words.
"You are cramped in your hand, my dear fellow," said he (for in those
days youths did not call each other "old man"--with sad sense of their
own decrepitude). "Bob, you are losing your freedom of touch. You
must come out of these stony holes, and look at a rocky mountain."
My heart gave a jump at these words; and yet I had been too much laid

flat by facts--"sat upon," is the slang of these last twenty years, and in
the present dearth of invention must serve, no doubt, for another
twenty--I say that I had been used as a cushion by so many landladies
and maids-of-all-work (who take not an hour to find out where they
need do no work), that I could not fetch my breath to think of ever
going up a mountain.
"I will leave you to think of it, Bob," said George, putting his hat on
carefully; "I am bound for time, and you seem to be nervous. Consult
your pillow, my dear fellow; and peep into your old stocking: and see
whether you can afford it."
That last hit settled me. People said, in spite of all my generous
acts--and nobody knows, except myself, the frequency and the extent of
these--without understanding the merits of the case--perfect (or rather
imperfect) strangers said that I was stingy! To prove the contrary, I
resolved to launch into great expenditure, and to pay coach fare all the
way from London toward the nearest mountain.
Half the inhabitants now were rushing helter-skelter out of London, and
very often to seaside towns where the smell of fish destroyed them.
And those who could not get away were shuddering at the blinds drawn
down, and huddling away from the mutes at the doors, and turning pale
at the funeral bells. And some, who had never thought twice before of
their latter end, now began to dwell