Wild Wales | Page 6

to the first solicitor in East Anglia
- indeed I may say the prince of all English solicitors - for he was a
gentleman, had learnt some Welsh, partly from books and partly from a
Welsh groom, whose acquaintance I made. A queer groom he was, and
well deserving of having his portrait drawn. He might be about
forty-seven years of age, and about five feet eight inches in height; his
body was spare and wiry; his chest rather broad, and his arms
remarkably long; his legs were of the kind generally known as
spindle-shanks, but vigorous withal, for they carried his body with
great agility; neck he had none, at least that I ever observed; and his
head was anything but high, not measuring, I should think, more than
four inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead; his
cheek-bones were high, his eyes grey and deeply sunken in his face,
with an expression in them, partly sullen, and partly irascible; his
complexion was indescribable; the little hair which he had, which was
almost entirely on the sides and the back part of his head, was of an
iron-grey hue. He wore a leather hat on ordinary days, low at the crown,
and with the side eaves turned up. A dirty pepper and salt coat, a
waistcoat which had once been red, but which had lost its pristine
colour, and looked brown; dirty yellow leather breeches, grey worsted
stockings, and high-lows. Surely I was right when I said he was a very
different groom to those of the present day, whether Welsh or English?
What say you, Sir Watkin? What say you, my Lord of Exeter? He
looked after the horses, and occasionally assisted in the house of a
person who lived at the end of an alley, in which the office of the
gentleman to whom I was articled was situated, and having to pass by
the door of the office half-a-dozen times in the day, he did not fail to
attract the notice of the clerks, who, sometimes individually, sometimes
by twos, sometimes by threes, or even more, not unfrequently stood at
the door, bareheaded - mis-spending the time which was not legally
their own. Sundry observations, none of them very flattering, did the
clerks and, amongst them, myself, make upon the groom, as he passed
and repassed, some of them direct, others somewhat oblique. To these
he made no reply save by looks, which had in them something
dangerous and menacing, and clenching without raising his fists, which

looked singularly hard and horny. At length a whisper ran about the
alley that the groom was a Welshman; this whisper much increased the
malice of my brother clerks against him, who were now whenever he
passed the door, and they happened to be there by twos or threes, in the
habit of saying something, as if by accident, against Wales and
Welshmen, and, individually or together, were in the habit of shouting
out "Taffy," when he was at some distance from them, and his back
was turned, or regaling his ears with the harmonious and well-known
distich of "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief: Taffy came to my
house and stole a piece of beef." It had, however, a very different effect
upon me. I was trying to learn Welsh, and the idea occurring to me that
the groom might be able to assist me in my pursuit, I instantly lost all
desire to torment him, and determined to do my best to scrape
acquaintance with him, and persuade him to give me what assistance he
could in Welsh. I succeeded; how I will not trouble the reader with
describing: he and I became great friends, and he taught me what
Welsh he could. In return for his instructions I persuaded my brother
clerks to leave off holloing after him, and to do nothing further to hurt
his feelings, which had been very deeply wounded, so much so, that
after the first two or three lessons he told me in confidence that on the
morning of the very day I first began to conciliate him he had come to
the resolution of doing one of two things, namely, either to hang
himself from the balk of the hayloft, or to give his master warning, both
of which things he told me he should have been very unwilling to do,
more particularly as he had a wife and family. He gave me lessons on
Sunday afternoons, at my father's house, where he made his appearance
very respectably dressed, in a beaver hat, blue surtout, whitish
waistcoat, black trowsers and Wellingtons, all with a somewhat ancient
look - the Wellingtons I remember were slightly pieced at the sides -
but all upon the