“Indeed I have, master,” says the boy. “Poor as I am I am not so poor that I have no name. I am Gwylim ap Sion ap Emrys ap Dafydd ap Owain ap Hywel ap Rhodri ap Rhydderch ap Gryffyd.”
“Good lad,” says the traveller. “You know your pedigree even to the ninth degree. And do you know your cousinship, as well?”
“To the ninth degree also,” says the boy, and I, from the end of the twentieth century, see pride in this sorry creature.
“You are a herald, as the Welsh have always been. But I must tell you, lad, that things have changed in Wales, and in the town the English no longer tolerate our long names and long pedigrees. If you come with me to Llanfair you will have to be Gwylim Griffiths, I suppose. But wait a bit – have you been baptized, my boy?”
“I do not know what is baptized,” says the lad.
“The great John Wesley is right when he says that we Welsh are as pagan as Red Indians,” says the traveller. “To be baptized, my child, is to be taken into Christ’s great family by prayer and sprinkling with water. Now, you bade me ask God what I should do with you, and God has put it into my mind that the first job is to baptize you. So come here by this stream and get into it as deep as you can.”
“I can go no deeper unless I lie down,” says the boy. “It is just up to my knees.”
“Then that will have to do. God gives us what he means us to use, and it seems that he does not want you to be wet all over. So close your eyes, and fold your hands, and listen reverently to me.”
What a scene this is! The Sniffer is looking at something else, which is so complex that it must be meant for symbolism, of which he is very fond. The Sniffer would not think highly of the biblical simplicity of what I see, as the rising sun strikes up the cruel valley from which the traveller and his follower have just emerged; they stand by the stream where the slate cliffs give way to green herbage, and there are sheep on the other side of the stream, cropping and uttering their perpetual gentle lament – Baa, baa, baa. I know for the first time how intimately the words of the Bible entered the hearts of the people of Wales, for the Scripture’s perpetual symbolism of the hills, the pastures, the flocks and the Good Shepherd were fresh to them as they can never be to dwellers in cities, or in lands that know nothing of sheep. I am in the embarrassing predicament of a man who has all his adult life cherished a gentle, smiling (sometimes foolishly giggling) cynicism about anything that hints of pastoral simplicity, or any simplicity, yet here I am, weeping – in so far as a man with no face and no tears can weep – weeping in the spirit as I see the boy standing with bowed head in the stream, and the traveller scooping up the clear water in his hands, and pouring it over his head as he prays.
No, no; this is not a scene for the Sniffer, but it is truly a scene for me. I feel the icy water pouring over my own head and down my face, to wash away my tears.
The traveller speaks again. “I have baptized you as a child of Christ, by water and the Holy Spirit, and it now comes to me very strongly that I should christen you, as well. Christen you into your new family. Have you a fancy for any particular name?”
“I am well pleased with the name I have,” says the boy, stoutly.
“But I have already explained to you that time and history have taken away the name you have. Can you write?”
“No, I cannot write, nor read, though I am anxious to do both,” says the boy.
“Then listen to me, my boy, for God is prompting me strongly. You are now in Christ’s family, well and truly, but I think you had better come into my family, as well. I have no child, I am sad to have to say, and that has always been a gentle but a real grief to me and my wife. Would you like to be my son?”
The boy’s face is all the answer he needs.
“Then bend your head to the water again, and in God’s name I christen you Wesley Gwylim Gilmartin. So be Wesley Gilmartin from this day forward.”
As they step out boldly toward Mallwyd, where the church tower is now in sight, the boy speaks, and perhaps he is not wholly content.
“I am grateful to you, father. But what kind of name is Gilmartin? I have never heard any such name.”
“Well, my son, it is not really a Welsh name, though I count myself a Welshman. It is a Scots name, from the far north, where my people lived a couple of generations ago. But you shall learn English, and keep your Welsh, and you shall be my apprentice.”
“A trade? Oh, I dearly want a trade! Which trade?”
“When I am not travelling to do God’s work and John Wesley’s work, I am a cloth merchant. I buy the good Welsh flannel and I send it to Scotland, where it is needed. It is called the Scotch Trade, and you shall learn it. You shall learn to be a weaver.”
So the weaver-preacher and his apprentice enter Mallwyd, and, having had some bread and ale for breakfast, they step out on the twenty miles to Llanfair yn Nghaer Einion, which today is called Llanfair Caereinion.
(7)
UNTIL NOW the film has progressed as straight narrative, but here it breaks up into the technique that I believe is called Concurrent Action, by knowing ones like Allard Going. Up on the left of the wide screen I see young Wesley Gilmartin hard at the work of the loom; it is a huge affair, and on the beam which is perpetually before his eyes is written, in Welsh, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.” But this is not young Wesley’s case, for I see that under the care of the preacher’s wife he is growing big and strong.
In the lower right-hand segment of the screen he is bent over his book, by the fireside; he is learning English, and writing, though he never becomes a great hand at either.
What is this, at lower left? These must be fair days, when Thomas Gilmartin visits the local towns – Trallwm, Newtown, and sometimes Berriew – to buy the red flannel that is the staple of his trade. It is of the reddest possible red, for that is the colour ordained for petticoats and the Welshwomen’s heavy cloaks, and is thought to be sovran against rheumatism and the woollen string disease, as consumption is called. Thomas can command the best because he is a fair dealer, and pays a fair price. Young Wesley accompanies him, to load the pack-horse with the purchased goods for the seven-mile track over the hills.
Here (upper right) I see Thomas preaching in the open air, as John Wesley did and counselled his preachers to do as well. His hearers wear the heavy clothes and gaiters of the farm; some are in smocks, exquisitely worked at the yoke; many of the women wear the heavy steeple-crown hats, so long the distinguishing mark of Welsh costume. These indestructible hats are heirlooms, passed from mother to daughter. Wet or fair Thomas stands in the streets, and he and the boy sing a hymn, as loud as they can in one language or the other, until they have drawn a big enough crowd to hear the Word.
Now another film technique is used: the screen is black, save for a single face, as some sinner is moved to tears of repentance. These people take their religion passionately, and their protests and confessions are loud and often eloquent.
(8)
WHAT NOW? More of this skilful montage, as I see Thomas Gilmartin grown old, and dying an exemplary death. Young Wesley, always so called though he is young no longer, gives a deathbed promise that he will continue the evangelical work, though he declares himself unworthy, for he has not the preaching gift as Thomas had it. But he kneels for blessing, and henceforth he travels through the towns, to buy the flannel, and to preach as best he can. He is earnest; he never seeks to be eloquent, but sometimes he achieves the eloquence of simplicity.
As I watch this sad scene – though Thomas assures all those who crowd around his deathbed that to die in the assurance of a blessed hereafter is not sad – I see in the other quarters of the screen Young Wesley’s concern for his children, his eldest son, Samuel, and a younger brother, another Thomas. Young Wesley has married twice, and the child of his first wife appears to be an exemplary youth, happy to continue in the Scotch Trade. But the son of his second marriage is rebellious, and wants something better. He wants to put his foot
on the ladder toward a fortune, and he knows how to do it. He wants to be a servant.
“Why?” asks Samuel, as the boys lie in bed together.
“Because I have a taste for something better than this,” says Thomas. “Do you think I want to bend at the loom until I am bunchbacked like our Dad? A weaver! Do you want to be a weaver, Sam?”
“Our Dad is not a weaver now. He has weavers to work for him. He doesn’t have to touch his cap to any man. Do you want to be a cap-toucher, and a toady? Where’s your manhood?”
“I’m ready to touch my cap if it brings me to the notice of people who can lift me in the world. I’ve a taste for a bit of life, Sam. Not this endless spinning and weaving and packing the horses and trudging to Scotland and haggling and being called a Greedy Taffy by a lot of greedy Scotchmen. Red flannel’s going out, Sam. You mark my words.”
“There’ll be money in red flannel for a while yet. And don’t sneer at our Dad. He’s done very well, look you. When he goes – as we all must, and God spare him – there’ll be a very pretty little bundle, and some if it will be for you. How can you be a servant if you have money of your own?”
“Being a servant is a very good trade. Look at Jesse Fewtrell. Do you suppose he has no money of his own?”
“Oh, very well, if you want to be a Jesse Fewtrell and scrape shillings by cheating your master, go ahead, and be damned to you!”
“Sam – I never thought to hear you curse me. I’ll tell our Dad.”
“I didn’t curse you, you morlock. I spoke theologically, which is probably above your head. I said – and I meant – that if you persist in this headstrong path, your damnation will be certain.”
“Oh? So it’s theological, is it? Well, I can be theological too. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of a lord than dwell in the tents of the Wesleyans.”
“Tommo, that’s twisting Scripture! I won’t share a bed with anyone who twists Scripture. I don’t know what might happen in the night!”
“Then get you out of bed.”
“Oh no, my fine lackey-lad. You get out of bed!”
And Samuel gives Thomas a mighty kick that lands him on the floor, where he spends the night.
Why? Because he has a hankering for high life and the only entrance to it, for Thomas, is the servants’ entrance. When he is in Trallwm with his father he sees the fine carriages of the county gentry with their splendid horses and coachmen and footmen in fine liveries. He knows them all and identifies the liveries as boys now identify makes of automobiles. Best of all, he sometimes sees a carriage from the Castle, and then there are two men on the box, and two footmen in their places behind, and in the carriage itself the Countess, and now and then the Earl, who seems to see no one, but from time to time lifts a weary finger to the brim of his wonderful hat, as he acknowledges a curtsy from some woman on the street. Virtually the whole town belongs to him, and these people are his tenants; he is upon the whole a popular and good landlord. As Thomas Gilmartin had said of his father, this boy has something of the nature of a herald, and the pomp and splendour of county gentility feeds his imagination and rouses his ambition. He horrifies his father by repeating his perversion of Scripture; he says that he would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of a lord than dwell in the tents of the Wesleyans!
This is abomination! Surely this is Cain raised!
Young Wesley does what he can. He beats Young Thomas soundly, for he that spares the rod hateth his son; but beating is of no avail. He exhorts him, but Young Thomas has a scoffer’s way with the Bible, and can quote more Scripture on behalf of the good and faithful servant’s life than his father can quote against it. His mother weeps, his brother storms, but Young Thomas cares nothing for words or tears. He cares for nothing but a fine coat, and buttons with a gentleman’s crest embossed on them, a hat with a smart cockade, and a face that is shaved every day.
So at last the black day comes when Young Wesley, who is now becoming Grey Wesley, accosts a stout, self-important man in the Trallwm street, and says, “Mr. Fewtrell, sir, may I beg a word with you?”
“Well, what is it, Gilmartin? I’m busy.”
Mr. Jesse Fewtrell is a very important man, for he is the Groom of the Chambers at the Castle, and he has favours to give. Favours, but only for the Earl’s tenants, and Young Wesley is not one of those. Favours for good Church people, and Young Wesley is a field preacher of that nasty group of craw-thumpers who are beginning to call themselves Methodists, as if John Wesley had not been a good C of E man all his life. Mr. Fewtrell’s fat face is sour as he looks at Young Wesley.
“It is my son Thomas, Mr. Fewtrell. He has a great desire to enter service, and I dared to hope that if you had a place you might give him his start, is it?”
Mr. Fewtrell is repelled by such a notion. The idea is preposterous. He has known of Methodists entering service, but only in Methodist households, which were not those of county gentry, to say nothing of the nobility. He wants no praying and psalm-singing among his staff. But when he looks at Young Thomas, who is a well-set-up lad, and whose breeches and stockings show that he has the good calves which are absolutely obligatory in a liveried servant, and a round red face, that looks so respectfully into his, and a great head of deep red hair, that glows like copper, Mr. Fewtrell has an idea. A disagreeable idea, of course, or Mr. Fewtrell would not have it, but an idea, all the same.
“The boy speaks English, I suppose?” he says.
“Oh yes indeed, sir. Very correct English,” says Young Thomas. But his tongue is that of someone who thinks in another language.
“I’ll take him on liking. I need a lad, but I won’t have any nonsense, you hear? Send him to the Castle on Monday next – that’s Lady Day; if he lasts for a quarter I’ll see what I can do. No pay for the first quarter, mind.”
“Oh thank you sir. Certainly not for the first quarter. Thank you, Mr. Fewtrell. You are very kind. And the lad will do everything to please you, I’ll go bail.”
Mr. Fewtrell nods curtly, and gives another hard look at Young Thomas, and goes about his business. Which is to take his morning glass of dark sherry at the Green Man; he will cut a figure in the bar where the superior tradesmen, as opposed to the farmers, are to be found. They are all tenants of the Earl, and Mr. Fewtrell is a great man to them.
I see, with sadness, that Grey Wesley, who speaks so confidently to God, is made humble by an upper servant at the Castle. But that is the way of the world, and when I was alive I saw much deferential smiling and heard much fawning speech in the New World, where such things are imagined by idealists to have no place.
Thus, on Lady Day, March 25, 1838, Thomas Gilmartin becomes a Castle servant. He receives no pay, but canny Mr. Fewtrell puts an item for his service under the record of Sundries he presents every month at the Estate Office, and pockets it himself. Once again the screen splits into four and I know rapidly what service means, for at the beginning there is no livery, and Thomas is what is called below-stairs “the gong boy.” Twice a day he empties the hundred and forty chamber-pots in the Castle, beginning with the elegant porcelain pots de chambre in the boudoirs of the Countess and her lady guests, then moving to the heavier jordans in the gentlemen’s rooms (some of which, unaccountably, and with no intention of disloyalty, have pictures of Royal Palaces printed inside them), and, last of all, the plain pots that are used by the servants. There are two hundred and eighty pots in all, for every day the pots of the day before must be taken down to a yard in the back premises, and there scalded and set out to air. As well as the pots there are commodes, concealed in fine sets of steps, or chairs of innocent appearance; but in each one there is a removable pewter container – called a Welsh Hat, because of its shape, and perhaps as a jeer at the peasantry – in which the dung of the gentry and their servants lurks, to be coaxed forth with a spatula, and put down an outdoor drain.
“The pots and the hats are your perks,” says the head footman, a great joker; “anything you find in them you can keep or sell, as
you please.”
The system of “perks” runs through the whole domestic staff of the Castle. Mr. Fewtrell’s perks are very great, for they are gifts of wine and spirits from the merchants that supply the great household, and he does a lively business in these among the tenant farmers who have money to spare, and like to say to their cronies, “This is a pure drop; comes from the Castle.” The chief footman’s perks are the candle-ends from the whole great household, for sometimes fourteen hundred candles are lighted in a single night, and the custom is that no candle is ever lit twice. And so his disposal of “long ends” in the town is very remunerative. Just as remunerative is the trade of the cook – for My Lord is old-fashioned enough to employ a woman to do his cooking, and will hear nothing of a French chef – because she sells dripping to those who bring their bowls to the little green door adjacent to the kitchen; where there are so many to feed and so many roasts on the spit every day, there is much dripping. The ladies’ maids and the valets, of course, have cast-off clothes. Everybody has perks except the gong-boy, and even he has his hopes, because there is a very old tale of a silver spoon having once been found in a Welsh Hat.
So Young Thomas would have toiled long as gong-boy if the Countess had not happened upon him one day as he was stealing a peach in the glasshouse. She ignores the peach; Countesses have upper servants to rebuke under servants. But she likes the looks of the handsome lad, and gives orders that he is to drive her pony-trap when she jaunts through the park to take the air. And so, to the annoyance of Mr. Fewtrell, Young Thomas gets a livery after about six months in Castle service.
Just a single livery, that of a groom. But Young Thomas grows in favour with the Countess, who likes handsome young men, and it is not long before he becomes a footman. Not an important footman, but one of the sixteen lesser footmen who do work about the place that would nowadays be expected of housemaids. And that means an advance to three liveries. One for morning, which is plain and is marked by a sleeve-waistcoat, a coat that has no tails; one for afternoon, which means breeches and stockings, and a coat with tails and pewter buttons; but – this is glorious – a full-dress livery for evening appearances in the corridors and in the dining-room, which means white stockings, plush breeches and a velvet coat with silver buttons, and, most glorious of all, powder for his red hair. It takes a lot of powder and pomatum to make his red hair the required white, and every morning his hair has to be washed before breakfast, for powder is not worn during the day. But Young Thomas revels in powder, and his impassivity of face, and his fine bowing – deferential but never personal – carry him far up the ladder of service, and by the time he is thirty years old he is head footman, and Mr. Fewtrell has had his first stroke of the fatal three, and is retired and can tyrannize no more.