This person was repulsive in the extreme. Clad in old, patched, dirty clothes, with such peculiar facial properties as we have before enumerated, he was apparently the last man upon whom one of the opposite sex would have cast her favouring eye. He was at this time chief husbandman and bailiff to the squire, an office which, giving him power over other servants, we may be very sure did not increase his popularity. But few showed their distaste and aversion openly; it would have been a dangerous experiment with Jack of Sheer 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 of course 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 pearl jutting over 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 mimicry against Jack, were soon taught a severe lesson at the expense 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 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 quantum 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 so close to his elbows at those hours of excitement; fierce punches in the ribs, as if by accident, were among the slightest consequences; and those who were thus taught the manners to keep a respectable distance, declared that the fears they entertained was only of his knife. But his bloodthirsty propensities were not so great as they were represented to be. Jack believed in the “power of the eye,” and exemplified it, in his own case, by making that organ express what his head never meant to carry out. The squire knew his value as a faithful servant, and turned a deaf ear to all the evil that was reported of him.
Before fanaticism had cast its puritanic gloom over Wales, and identified itself almost with the Welsh in character, mirth and minstrelsy, dance and song, emulative games and rural pastimes were the order of the day; and, as the 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 the game.
Jack thought the exercise of play was waste of time and breath. He told others that he “kept his breath to cool his flummery, and his strength to make money.” Whilst the others were panting with efforts made in the game, Jack was quietly cutting and carving his wooden spoons, made out of the birch or alder which he stored all the week under his bed, for the purpose of drying it.
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 merchandise of his own manufacture, wooden spoons, ladles, and clog soles, in abundance, which drew about him all the rural house-keepers 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, was said to present 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, supposed to be suns, moons, stars, hearts transfixed with the dart of cupid, and sometimes a hen and chickens; with hieroglyphics 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.