The Bettesworth book; talks with a Surrey peasant

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY . . .3

II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 1 9

II

To depict the man, by way of giving some vividness of reality to his talk, would be a task for an accomplished artist. And were it done, the most picturesque description might be after all not wholly desirable here ; for such a picture, dwelling on Bettesworth's personal peculiarities as he appears in everyday life, would necessarily deal with what are, in fact, merely the accidentals, the man's superficial differences from his neighbours : it would leave out of account the essentials, the typical race-characteristics which he shares with other men. Why trouble to tell of Bettesworth's soiled "slop," his much-patched corduroys, or his broadbrimmed hat, seeing that, apart from special creases and mendings, his clothes are such as all his class wear ? These need not concern us, nor yet need his comely old physiognomy ; for, although all labouring men have not the broad, tanned cheeks, the grizzled whiskers and stubbly chin of Bettesworth ; although all eyes are not grey and twinkling, nor all mouths both determined and good-tempered ; yet the thing that renders this one man's features valuable and venerable is the human worth manifest through them — the English instinct, in fact, that is active in them for the time being; and this is not Bettesworth's appropriated possession. Without this Essential making itself unconsciously apparent in them, I should hardly have learned to love the sight of the old man's strong bent shoulders, or of his legs, heavily plodding for the most part, but sometimes moving with an astonishing gaunt activity. But this one vital quality dignifies all, whether you look at his scratched, sunburnt arms and knotted hands, or listen to the easily-flowing voice, whose low tones are peaceful as the babble of a housemartin on a quiet afternoon. And for the same reason — because they contain something of the same essence — I have treasured up these talks of his ; because in gossiping about his own life

Bettesworth is unawares telling of the similar lives, as lived for ages, of a type of Englishmen that may perhaps be hard to meet with in time to come. For it seems as though destiny has decreed that this class of men, by centuries of incalculable struggle and valiant endurance, should prepare England's soil not for themselves, but for the reaping machine and the jerry-builder.

Ill

This is not the place for entering into particulars about our most interesting locality. Only, for understanding several points* that might otherwise be obscure in Bettesworth's talk, it should be known that we are on the borders of the shaggy waste-land of Surrey. Looking southwards from our garden we can see it rolling up in long hills, their distant ridges serrated by the multitudinous crests of fir-trees, their slopes brown with heath.

Little else will that waste-land bear, it might be supposed. Yet in truth our valley, green enough in its disordered way, has itself been reclaimed from the waste chiefly during the last half-century. Fifty years ago it was for the most part

II a common traversed by sand-tracks where now are the hard roads. Then, little by little, the valley was settled ; small gardens were enclosed and rough shanties run up by squatters whom none found it worth while to molest. To-day the village, if that name may be applied to so anomalous a community, lies scattered disorderly, rubbishy-looking, with scarce six houses anywhere in a row, for a mile or more on either side of the deep but narrow valley. It is a village without a history, without any central life ; and hence the people at one end of it are strangers to those at the other. In the absence of large farms their employment is unsettled, their poverty very great ; but, perhaps because of that, one after another they are painfully civilising a very savage tract of English earth.

Bettesworth himself, a native of the place, has done his share towards taming its wrldness. This garden of ours owes much to his labour in helping to form it thirty years ago. On the sheltered south-western slope of a spur of hill jutting into the valley, it was still at that time an almost unmanageable sand heap, very steep. Aided by Bettesworth, the owner terraced it up with low walls and grassy banks. " When old Andrew fust come here," Bettesworth has told me, "'twas nothin' but a prighty" (? upright) "hill. He have put in some labour here. You'd never find 'n indoors. I've seed 'n up on this hill when 'twas cold 'nough to perish a monkey." It is now a brilliant picture of what untiring industry may make out of the most unpromising material. Sand — dry sand for an immense depth — that is what we in this village have to deal with. "Sand-martins," Bettesworth facetiously entitles us. And a decent supply of water hardly exists in the district. Even the little stream — " The Lake," as it is called when it runs at all — is dry for perhaps eight months in the year.

In one conversation mention is made of Bettesworth's " own part of the garden." There being much more land belonging to the house than I care to cultivate, the old man is allowed to do what he can with one portion of it, on condition of keeping it tidy. This, in addition to the large garden belonging to his cottage further down the valley, keeps him busy, and is, I believe, a source of pleasure to him, and also of profit.

IV

In reading these conversations it should be remembered that the talk is very rapid as well as very quiet. Without hesitation the words follow one another, every sentence mumbled out as though it were one long polysyllable. Strict phonetic accuracy in the spelling would have made reading almost impossible. I have attempted only to suggest the dialect, not to reproduce it. The items of that farmer's bill for horse hire —

" Aorsafada, 3s. 6d. ; Atakinofunomagen, 6d." —

were set down with phonetic exactness, but they are not easy to understand. Besides, although defective in much besides aspirates (which I have freely supplied where they never occur), Bettesworth's language is a form of English, and deserves to be written as nearly as may be in the normal manner.

For the rest, it should be said that these talks, reported from memory, suffer by my forgetfulness. Beyond the occasional suppression of tedious repetitions, they owe nothing to my editing ; but ' they lose much in the way of racy phrases and words fat with meaning, which I have failed to remember. Finally, every good thing here is Bettesworth's ; for nothing has been set down that I am not sure of, however much I may have got it out of place.

II

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

II

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

Of Bettesworth's young days there is little to be told ; and that little was chiefly gleaned from one long conversation, of which, to my regret, I was able to take only the most frs^mentary notes.

He was telling of what was, I suppose, the most comfortable period in all his life — of the years, namely, that he spent with the Barnes family at Penstead, after running away from his uncle.

It was as a boy, not twelve years old, that he began work for Farmer Barnes. In those days, fifty years ago, it was the custom for the lads on a farm to live in the farmhouse ; and, in Bettesworth's case, this was a privilege that compensated for much that was rugged in his life. From his tone in talking of the Barneses you

• 19 may be sure that they were good to him. The day's work would be hard and thorough ; but at the close of it there would be any amount of bread and bacon and plenty of home-brewed beer, and in the winter a sure drowsy place by the kitchen fire. Hearing Bettesworth, it is not difficult to picture the open hearth, with its chimney-corners ; the fire-shine glowing out dim and ruddy upon flitches of bacon hung round the room, and reddening upon the faces of the sleepy boys. It is likely that never again was Bettesworth in such good quarters ; indeed, you can judge how different the subsequent life has been, and how full of privation, by the stoical, mournful expression that a passing gleam of fun will drive only for a brief moment from his grey eyes.

At Penstead his quarters were good, and his employers of the genuine stuff* that a sturdy English lad admires. I have but one note as to Farmer Barnes; but it is typical. Said Bettesworth, "If ever I was at work anywhere near the sheep-fold, I'd be sure to slip over an' steal a swede to give to my 'orses. The old farmer — he wouldn't say nothin' so long as you done it open ; but if he catched ye sneakin' it down so's

Boyhood and Youth

not to be seen, then he'd let ye have it ! He would swear at ye an' no mistake. But so long as you was open about it, he'd on'y laugh. Well, he knowed the sheep always had plenty o* tommy, an' they never 'ad no work to do, same as the horses."

That's the old Hampshire farmer, before the railways changed him. Unreasonable, pigheaded, with a sure instinct for detecting the sneak and an overpowering dialect for damning him, but with an instinct equally sure, and a laugh always ready, for boy or man that was doing the straight thing. And Farmer Barnes seems to have had a wife worthy of him. From Bettesworth's talk, I have come to imagine Mrs. Barnes a comely, buxom woman, very practical, perhaps sharp-tongued, but with a real motherly liking for the lads in her house. She it was who found young Bettesworth decent clothes and packed him off to the night school, where he learnt " more'n ever he learnt anywhere else," and liked it too. And one can almost see her good-tempered understanding of the lad's alacrity, when on some autumn evening he was bidden ride off on the pony with a present of game to some distant friend.

Of course she knew of the shilling or half-crown that was to reward him — (" the doctor," said he, " always gi' me half a crown "), and was glad for him to have it. On the other hand, she would have no nonsense. The boys, learning to smoke (Bettesworth acquired that accomplishment at the age of twelve), must steal off well out of her way to do it. Trying to recall his words, I can now remember only the atmosphere of them ; something odd in the knowledge that the old man's thoughts were wandering back to those stealthy smokes in the lanes around the old hill-side village, when the evening's stillness deepened round the fear of Mrs. Barnes's anger. Before he left the farm, Bettesworth was a strong young man, to whom important work could be entrusted. And so it fell to him to take the hops down ia the waggon to Weyhill fair, by Andover. Forty years ago, to visit that fair was a great event : and Bettesworth kindled with glowing recollection of the exciting things he had experienced at Weyhill. He tried to tell me of a song which " colts " or strangers to the fair were called upon to sing ; but, breaking down in that, he passed on eagerly to tell of " driving for the ribbons " — the ribbons that

Boyhood and Youth

rewarded the carter ^Vho brought the first load of hops on to the hill. " IVe drove," he said, " all night, purty near a trot, purpose for to git the ribbons. There's four bunches o' ribbons for your 'orses. . . . Who gives 'm to ye ? Ooh — I dunno. . . , They up there. I s'pose it comes out o' the fair. . . . You should see our old Miss laugh when we come 'ome with the ribbons. One o' the Burtons, she was — reg'lar rich people. Why, she 'ad fifty thousan' pound come to her all in one lump — an' no family. Very nice sort o* woman she was, too. . . ."

Here, without explanation, my notes revert to the song already mentioned, and the ceremony called "horning" connected with it. At a certain inn at Weyhill there were two horns, mounted so that the " colt " could wear them on his head while singing. And " there was a little place in 'tween the horns, purpose fgr to put a half-pint cup full o' beer in. Him what 'ad the 'orns, he used to have to sing this here song ; and then he had to pay the fine if he didn't sing it right." Doubtless the fine was beer ffce to all the company. Sometimes, probably as often as possible, an old stager, if well-to-do, would be caught and expected to "treat" handsomely.

Once they " homed " an older brother of Farmer Barnes. Said he, " * You thinks you got hold o' a fine colt, I dessay ; but I thinks he's more of a old 'oss/ " But the " old 'oss " enjoyed the fun, and contributed half a sovereign for beer. Be sure, too, that Bettesworth was in the thick of these games. " I 'ad 'em on three times one year. They didn't know but what I was a colt. And I liked 'avin' of 'm on."

Pressed for the words of the song, he could give me only the refrain :

*' Harn, boys I harn !

Drink like yer daddy wi' the long pair o' harns ! "

and one other line. I owe it to a friend's inquiries in other directions, that I am able here to give a version of the song that is at least complete so far as it goes : —

" So fleet run the hare, so cunnin* run the fox, Why should not this young calf grow to be an ox ? For to get his livin*, through briars and through thorns, And die like his daddy with his long pair o' horns.

Horns, boys, horns !

Horns, boys, horns !

And drink like his daddy with the long pair o' horns/'

Ill

Ill

Had I sufficient notes of it, a talk I had with a London 'bus-driver might, not inappropriately, have a place here; not only because Bettesworth, being told of it, was moved to recall further details of his own earlier biography, but also because the 'bus-man himself — a gravely gossipping fellow, "not thirty yet," he said — seemed to be enjoying the same experiences that Bettesworth had lived through before the other was born. In truth, I was startled by the similarity between the two men. Save for the dialect, it might have been Bettesworth's self, telling of his horse that had grown restive in the Strand, of the old lady who pleaded with him not to whip the poor thing, and of his suggestion that she had better sit further back

I if her feelings were hurt, because in the Strand a horse cannot be allowed to gfive trouble. A Hampshire man was the 'bus-driver; like Bettesworth, he had begun life very early, working about near home until a craze for " rambling " took him. He had rambled to London ; then back into Hampshire ; and now once more had been in London nearly ten years, but supposed that some day he should make a change again, seeing that he was " only at the beginning of his life."

Bettesworth, be sure, was interested ; and when at last I related how the *bus-driver in his boyhood had worked for some horse dealers in the country, where he learnt " all about horses," the old m'an took up the parable.

" Ah," he said, " and that's where ye do learn. Some of these 'ere old Hampshire carters, they knows as much as any vet ..."

" Twas for horse dealers this lad worked," I' explained, "until one of them knocked him about so that he left. I thought of you and your uncle . . ."

" Ah, I've had some knockin' about, and from old carters too. But then, after that you don't care. Law ! ye see some poor chaps, they gits out o* work and be afraid to go away from home. If they'd had the knockin' about IVe had . . ."

The reader may draw his own conclusion from the hypothesis : but Bettesworth apparently does not think some "knocking about" altogether bad for boys" Just a hint of those early hardships he suffered from is given in the next conversation. On this occasion, excited by the 'busman's history, he went on to fill a gap in the narrative of his own wanderings.

Or rather, not to fill it so much as to suggest how full of incident those wanderings were. The talk that follows tells only the end of an episode, the beginning and the middle of which I did not hear until another time, long afterwards, when I had no opportunity to make notes. I give the substance of those later talks before letting Bettesworth finish the tale in his own way.

The young man had left Farmer Barnes and Penstead, and was working — as carter still — for a brother of the farmer, "Old Jimmy Barnes." One cold day, when the weather was between snowing and raining and freezing, young Bettesworth, carting hop-poles for Mr, Barnes, found his work too heart-breaking to be endured. He was miles from home. The tracks through the coppice — you could not call them roads — were knee-deep in mud. There were two horses for the solitary young man to manage, and of course a two-hojfse load of poles to be got home on the long polecarriage. Wherefore it happened that the heavily-loaded " carriage " stuck fast in deep clay, upon which it behoved Bettesworth to unload, get horses and pole -carriage out of the hole they had sunk in, and then replace the load. Once, or twice even, this might have been borne, but six times it happened — six times he had to unload and re-load those icy poles, snow and rain whirling through the coppice all the time, mud begriming him, his beloved horses suffering, his own hands chapped and raw from handling the half-frozen poles. Long after dark he got home tired out ; but there were the horses to see to. He made them comfortable: got to rest himself about midnight : was up again early the next day to give the horses some corn (which he is to this day glad to think he did not stint for that last time of feeding them), and then was off, without word to Mr. Barnes.

And now for his own talk again, provoked by my tale to him of the 'bus-man, who left his master because of being knocked about. " This lad," I had said, "cleared out and went to London." Upon which Bettesworth was reminded —

" When I left old Jimmy Barnes's — one Sunday it was — I never told nobody where I was goin*. 'Twas on Staines Bridge I pulled up at last — that was on the Monday evenin'; an* next mornin' I was drivin' a pair o' horses into London. I was on Staines Bridge, lookin' down at the water, and a man come along. He ast me what I'd bin used to, and I told 'n.

* Well,' he says, * come along o' me.' So I went with 'n down to the stables. He was the only married one o* six : six men there was, an' twelve horses, and he was a kind o' foreman among 'em. One o' their lads had jest left. * The guv'nor '11 be down afore long,' he says. So I waited ontil he come.

* Who've ye got hereP'^e says. So he told 'n

* a chap out o' the country.' He ast what I'd bin used to ; an' when I told 'n he says, * D 'ye think you could drive they two 'orses ? * *Yes/ I says, but I didn't know. They was bigger 'n any Td ever had to do wi*. They was some horses, an* no mistake. They was biggish cart-horses down in 'Ampshire, but these. . . . ! However, I took *em into London next mornin*, right into Smithfield Market, loaded with hay and corn. I was all right ; I had to drive behind this 'ere chap, ye see ; he went first That first night he ast me,

* How be ye breeched for money ? ' * I got a little,' I says, *but I en't got much.' So he says, * Come along 'ome wi' me, then.' And so I did. I lodged with 'n three year, and after that was off again . . .

"This 'ere chap, I never see 'n again for years ; an* then at last I met 'n at Longwater, at our club there. He was a member, and I didn't know it. But at the dinner he set opposite me, an* he kept lookin' at me. My brother-in-law next to me he says, ^That man knows you, Fred.'

* I thinks I knows him,' I says. And by 'n by he says to me, * En't your name Fred ? ' * Yes,' I says. * An' do you know my name ? ' he says.

* Dugaldson, en't it ? ' I says. And that was he. And 't wan't so very long afore we was off and havin' a drink together. ... I'd lived with 'n three year ; then I took it into my head to move. He wanted me to stay; but I had a kind o' roamin* commission.

"In two days I went from Staines down t' other side o' Chichester. Come to Siddlesham first day; then off again seven mile t'other side o* Chichester, and I was faggin' (reaping) that evenin'. My older brother was down there. Well, I knowed purty well where he'd be, 'cause he'd worked there as a boy with his father. . . .

"But that was my way. I'd be savin' up money, an* then go off an' see the country. An' that's the way I'd sooner travel. I don't see nothin' in gwine by train. You be here an' then there. / likes to go so's if you sees anything that sims to interest ye you can stand an' look at it. If I be gwine off for pleasure, that's how I'd sooner go ; not by train. Certainly you can't git so very fur, but . . ."

It's all very long ago: five-and-thirty years and more. But still the satisfying memories of it are alive in the old man's brain, and as they ooze out in unconsidered narrative at odd times, it is wonderful how well the tales corroborate one another in all important points.

IV

YOUTH

IV

YOUTH

Of the "knocking about" that Bettesworth endured as a boy I should probably have heard nothing — for he would not think it worth mentioning — were it not that he detests the insubordination of modem boys. They are " mouthy," he thinks ; that is, they enjoy too great a liberty of speech ; and they are punished too seldom. In fact, the presence of the policeman shields them, to their own detriment and to the annoyance of sedate villagers, from the chastisement they frequently deserve. Bettesworth's hands tingle to be at them ; and meanwhile, " Smart difference," he complains, " when I was a boy. Law! I've been cut over with girt clods throwed at me as I bin walkin' across the fields, and laid there afraid to git up, let alone speakin'.

" I did git some knockin' about. I payed one man for 't though, when I was big enough, I always swore Fd let Thomas have it, and so I did. He laid on the ground hollerin' to me to forgive 'n. * No,' I says, * if you don*t git up to have it, you'll have it where you lays.* But there — a cruel, spiteful feller he was, everybody said so. My master at last said to 'n, *Look here! I keeps gettin' fresh under-carters and none of 'em won't work with ye, and now you'll ha' to change or else I shall.' I swore I'd pay 'n, and the time come at last. Me and another was up on the waggon to take the sheaves ; and Thomas he wouldn't stop the waggon gwine up the field nor yet down."

The pace was too quick ; and moreover, the man tossed up four sheaves at a time, faster than the two on the waggon could handle them, until at last Bettesworth's mate said, " Butt 'n, Fred." And Fred did so. The next sheaf that came up to him was hurled back, butt-end upon Thomas, Bettesworth himself promptly following. No less promptly Thomas hit him over 9 the head with the prong, only to be himself

Youth

knocked down by the other fellow, who had leapt from the waggon. "And afore he could git up, I was over *n " — being still but a lad — " payin' into he's ribs with my shoes."

He told me no more ; nothing of the end of the fight. Fancy pictures the quiet harvest field, the August sky, the placid horses waiting and wondering, and those desperate men struggling cruelly in the stubble among the corn sheaves — and that is all.

But in thus standing up to hardships such as the modem boy is not called upon to face, Bettesworth has learnt to " see himself righted," as he says. He told this tale incidentally, in describing the measures he had lately taken to protect himself from annoyance by the boys of the village. For these, unwisely, had sought to make a butt of him.

His removal to his present dwelling was the inducement to them to begin. There is no road near this cottage. A narrow footpath passes it ; some old withies stand near. The previous tenant was a ne'er-do-well Irishman, often drunk, and frequently the victim of cruel jokes. Sometimes, with a rope tied at one end to his door-latch and at the other to one of the withies, the boys would fasten up the door for the pleasure of hearing the man inside swear upon discovering that he was imprisoned. And this was not the worst of many persecutions practised upon the man.

For the first four Sundays after Bettesworth took possession (Sunday is the day of leisure for practical joking) attempts were made to submit him to the same kind of annoyance. It seemed safe. No policeman ever visits that out-of-the-way corner; and Bettesworth is an old man. But his would-be tormentors did not know his record. He lay in wait for them, with a thick stick which presently he had the pleasure of bringing down with a crash across the Sunday bowler-hat of a boy " beginning his larks there." And then he seized the boy, shook him, " made his teeth rattle, an' all he could say was * Oh dear^ oh dear! " flung him half-way towards the brook hard by, and was after him to fling him the other half, had not the boy been " too nimble."

The neighbours told him he was " too spiteful " ; but other boys suffered at his hands, and at length the father of one of them " come to me, 'cause I'd bin hittin' his boys, and he didn't allow nobody to hit his boys. * Don't ye?' I says. 'I'll hit

Youth

you^ if you comes 'ere and don't make them orderly.' And I flung my old jacket on the ground . . ." ready to begin — but the man thought better of it, being persuaded by the neighbours that Bettesworth would certainly do all that he threatened, if he was molested.

V

WANDERINGS: AND BOYHOOD

AGAIN

WANDERINGS: AND BOYHOOD

AGAIN

Of Bettesworth's further ramblings, besides other details, the following is probably the fullest account that will ever be obtained. Its incoherencies are partly my fault; for not knowing at this time how he had travelled, nor yet expecting a kind of autobiography from the

ft

old man, I was trying to make him tell of other matters, which proved irrelevant to his subject, yet cannot well be extricated now from the gossip that they interrupted.

I had been reading George Borrow's " Zincali " when it occurred to me that some of his observations might be within Bettesworth's experience too ; for Bettesworth has seen more than a little of gypsies and travelling folk. I therefore watched for a chance of leading the talk round to that subject.

At length my opportunity seemed to come. A wedding in the village was being celebrated by a most wanton ding-donging of the church bells. I remarked on the wastefulness of spending money on mere noise, and on so much of it ; but Bettesworth explained that the bridegroom was one of the village bell-ringers. And, he said, " The ringers always doos like that, if there's e'er a one of 'em 'appens to git married. They was all down about he's 'ome, I see, when I come up by.'*