Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer Part 12

As the old wise toads crept out from hole and wall-cranny and waddled solemn and moist-skinned across the lawn about their affairs, so Bettesworth about his, not much regarding a wet coat. He had theories as to hilling potatoes, or rather as to not hilling them until the ground could be drawn round the haulm wet. And here was his chance. In the afternoon he took it, joyfully, and the earth turned up rich and dark under his beck.[2]

The tool set him talking. For hilling potatoes he reckoned, a beck is much better than a hoe: "leaves such a nice crumb on the ground." He was resolved to have his "five-grained spud" or garden fork turned into a beck--the next time he went to the town, perhaps, "'cause it wouldn't take 'em long, jest to turn the neck, and then draw the rivets an' take the tree out an' put in a handle. 'T'd make a good tool then--so sharp!

"This old beck I'm usin'," he went on happily, "I warrant he's a hunderd year old. He belonged to my wife's gran'father afore I had 'n; and _I_'ve had 'n this thirty year or more.... He's a reg'lar hand-made one--and a good tool still. That's who he belonged to--my old gal's gran'father.

"He" (the grandfather) "had this place over here o' Warner's--'twas him as built that, you know." The property mentioned is a large cottage and garden, adjoining that from which Bettesworth and his wife had so lately been turned out. "And he was the one as fust planted Brook's Field. He had Nott's, down here, and Mavin's, and Brook's Field--and a _purty_ bit that was, too! He was the fust one as planted it. Dessay he had a hunderd acres. Used to keep a little team, and a waggon shed--up the lane here, an' come down this lane an' right in there...."

But we need not follow Bettesworth into these topographical details.

Returning, in a moment, to the prosperity of his wife's grandfather, he hinted at the basis of it. The man was a peasant-farmer, producing for his own needs first, and enjoying certain valuable rights of common.

"He used to keep two or three cows," said Bettesworth. "Well, moost people used to keep a cow then, what _was_ anybody at all. Ye see, the commons was all open, and the boys what looked after the cows used to git so much for every one; so the more (cows) they could git the better their week's wages was for lookin' after 'em.

"They _was_ some boys too, some of 'em--when there got two or three of 'em up there in the Forest together, 'long o' the cows!" The old man chuckled grimly. "I rec'lect one time me an' Sonny Mander and his brother went after one o' the forest ponies. There was hunderds o'

ponies then. Deer, too. And as soon as we caught 'n, I was up on his back. I didn't care after I got _upon_ 'n. I clung on to his mane--his mane was down to the ground--and off he went with me, all down towards Rocknest and"--well, and more topography. "He tore through everything, an' scratched my face, and I was afraid to get off for fear he should gallop over me.... And they hollerin' after 'n only made 'n worse. He run till he was beat, afore I got off.

"_Purty_ tannin' I got, when I got 'ome! 'Cause me clothes was tore, and me cap was gone.... Oh, _I_ had beltinker! They had the news afore I got 'ome, 'cause so many cowboys see me."

Smiling, Bettesworth resumed work with his ancient beck, by dexterous twist now right and now left turning the dark wet earth in to the potato haulm.

It was about this time that, our talk working round somehow to the subject of donkeys, Bettesworth remarked, as if it were a part of the natural history of those interesting animals, and indeed one of their specific habits, "Moost donkeys goes after dirty clothes o' Monday mornin's." I suppose that is true of the donkeys kept by the numerous cottage laundresses in this parish.

From this he launched off into a long rambling narrative, which I did not understand in all its details, of his "old mother-in-law's donkey," named Jane, whom he once drove down into Suss.e.x for the harvesting. "She drinked seven pints o' beer 'tween this an'

Chichester. Some policemen give her one pint when we drove down into Singleton. There was three or four policemen outside the public there," Goodwood races being on at the time; and these policemen treated Jane, while Bettesworth went within to refresh himself. "That an' some bread was all she wanted. I'd took a peck o' corn for her, but she didn't sim to care about it; and I give a feller thruppence what 'd got some clover-gra.s.s on a cart, but she only had about a mouthful o' that." In short, Jane preferred bread and beer. "Jest break a loaf o' bread in half an' put it in a bowl an' pour about a pint o' beer over 't.... But she'd put her lips into a gla.s.s or a cup and soop it out. Reg'lar coster's donkey, she was, and they'd learnt her. Not much bigger 'n a good-sized dog--but _trot_!"

How she trotted, and won a wager, against another donkey on the same road, was told so confusedly that I could not follow the tale.

In Suss.e.x, Jane was the delight of the farmer's children. "'May I have a ride on your donkey?' they'd say, twenty times a day. 'Yes,' I'd say, 'if you can catch her.' And she'd let 'em go up to her, but as soon as ever they got on her back they was off again. 'You give her a bit o' bread,' I'd say; 'p'raps she'll let ye ride then.' And they used to give her bread," but she would never suffer them to ride her.

People on the road admired the donkey--nay, the whole equipage.

"Comin' home, down Fernhurst Hill, I got up--'cause I rode down 'ills--I walked all the rest--and says, 'Now, Jane, there's a pint o'

beer for ye at the bottom of the hill.' So we come down" to the inn there, named by Bettesworth but forgotten by me, "and three or four farmers there says, 'Here comes the man wi' the little donkey!' And I called out for a pint, and she thought she was goin' to have it; but I says, 'No, this is for me. You wait till you got your wind back.'"

We spoke afterwards of other donkeys, and particularly of one--a lady's of the neighbourhood--which, as Bettesworth had been told, was "groomed and put into the stable with a cloth over him, jest like the other horses.... Law! if donkeys was looked after, they'd _kill_ all the ponies (by outworking them), but they don't get no chance."

The harvesting expeditions into Suss.e.x, and the keeping of cows on the common, were parts of an antique peasant economy now quite obsolete.

In August of this year a further glimpse of it was obtained, in a conversation which, I grieve to say, I neglected to set down in Bettesworth's own words.

_August 21, 1903._--There was a time shortly after his marriage, and, as I guess, between forty and fifty years ago, when he rented a cottage and garden quite close to this house. The price of wheat being then two shillings the gallon, he used to grow wheat in his garden; and his average crop was at the rate of fourteen or fifteen sacks to the acre, or nearly twice as much as local farmers now succeed in growing.

In making this use of his garden he was by no means singular. Many of his neighbours at that date grew their own corn; and it was Mrs.

Bettesworth's brother (a man still living, and now working a threshing engine) who dibbed it for them. The dibber ("dessay he got it now") was described by Bettesworth--a double implement, made for dibbing two rows at a time. It had two "trees," like spade handles, set side by side, each of which was socketed into an iron bent forwards like a letter L. On the under-side of each iron, four excrescences made four shallow holes in the ground, "about like a egg"; and a rod connecting the two irons kept the double tool rigid. Walking backwards, the man using this implement could press into the ground two rows of egg-shaped holes at a time, as fast as the women could follow with the seed. For it seems that two women followed the dibber, carrying their seed-corn in basins and dropping one or two grains into each hole. The ground was afterwards rolled with a home-made wooden roller; and as soon as the corn came up the hoe was kept going, the rows being about eight inches asunder, until the crop was knee high.

Is it wrong to give so much s.p.a.ce to these haphazard recollections?

They interrupt the narrative of Bettesworth's slow and weary decline--that must be admitted. Yet, following as they do so close upon his wretched experiences in contact with more modern life, they help to explain why he and modernity were so much at odds. He had been a labourer, a soldier, all sorts of things; but he had been first and last by taste a peasant, with ideas and interests proper to another England than that in which we are living now.

In course of time, but not yet, a good deal more was to be gleaned from him about this former kind of country existence. I shall take it as it comes, and, while Bettesworth is losing grip of life, let the contrast between him dying and the modern world eagerly living make its own effect. As now this detail, and now that, is added to the ma.s.s, perhaps a little of the atmosphere may be restored in which his mind still had its being, and through which he saw our time, yet not as we see it.

Meanwhile, there is one reminiscence which stands by itself and throws light on little or nothing, but is too queer to be omitted. Having no place of its own, it is given here because it comes next in my note-book.

_October 24, 1903._--It was the weather that started our talk.

Bettesworth could not remember anything like this year 1903 for rain.

But there! he supposed we should get some fine weather again "somewhen?"

Now, I had just been reading some history, and was able to answer with some confidence, "Oh yes. There have been wet years before this."

And I mentioned the year after the Battle of Waterloo.

Then Bettesworth, "Let's see. Battle of Waterloo? That was in '47, wa'n't it?"

I chanced to be able to give him the correct date, which he accepted easily, as if he had known all the time. "Oh ah," he said. "But there was something in eighteen hunderd and forty-seven--some great affair or other?... I dunno what 'twas, though, now.... Forty-seven? H'm!"

What could it have been? No, not the Mutiny. "That come after the Crimea. 'Twa'n't that. But there was something, I know."

I could not imagine what it could have been; but Bettesworth still pondered, and at last an idea struck him. "June, '47.... H'm!... Oh, I knows. Old Waterloo Day, that's what 'twas! There used to be a lot of 'em" (he was hurrying on, and I could only surmise that he meant Waterloo veterans) "at Chatham. I see one of 'em there myself, what had cut one of his hamstrings out o' cowardice, so's he shouldn't have to go into the battle. So then they cut the other, too, an' kep' 'n there" (at Chatham) "for a peep-show. He wa'n't never to be buried, but put in a gla.s.s case when he died.

"He laid up there in his bed, and anybody as mind could go up an' see 'n. They used to flog 'n every Waterloo Day--in the last years 'twas a bunch o' black ribbons he was flogged with. He had a wooden ball tied to a bit o' string; and you go up, and ast 'n about the 71st (?), and see what you'd git! 'Cause one of the soldiers o' the 71st went up there once, an' called 'n all manner o' things. O' course, when he'd throwed this ball he could always draw 'n back again, 'cause o' the string.... And every mornin' he was ast what he'd have to drink. They said he was worth a lot, and 't'd all go to a sergeant-major's daughter when he died, what looked after 'n.

"He was worth a lot o' money. Lots used to go up to see 'n--I did, and so did a many more, 'cause he was kep' there for show, and everybody as went up he'd ast 'm for something. He'd git half a crown, or ten shillin's, or a sovereign sometimes. But lots o' soldiers used to go an' let 'n have it.

"Ye see, he couldn't git up. He cut his own hamstring for cowardice, so's he shouldn't go into battle, and then they cut the other. 'Twas the Dook o' Wellington, they says, ordered it to be done, for a punishment. And, o' course, he never was able to walk again. That done him. There he laid on the bed, with waddin' wrapped all round to prevent sores. And in one part o' the room was the gla.s.s case ready for when he died, for 'n to be embarmed an' kep'--'cause he was never to be buried. Fifty year he laid there! I shouldn't much like his bit, should you?"

FOOTNOTE:

[2] A tool of which the iron part resembles that of a garden fork, the handle, however, being socketed into it at right angles, as in a rake.

XXI

_November 4, 1903._--One morning--it was the 4th of November--Bettesworth said, "I got a invitation out to a grand dinner to-night, down in the town. Veterans of the Crimea. But I shan't go.

I'd sooner be at home and have a bit o' supper an' get to bed early.... No; it don't cost ye nothin'--an' plenty _of_ everything; spirits, good food, a very good _dinner_. Still, you can't go to these sort o' things without spendin' a shillin'. And then be about half the night. I don't care about it. If I was to go, 't'd upset me to-morrer."

All this bewildered me. For one thing, it was plain that the fact of Bettesworth's having been a soldier was no secret after all. As he now went on to tell me, he had actually attended two previous dinners. Who were they, then, who knew his record, and got him his invitation? Who, indeed, was giving the dinner? Rumours of some such annual celebration, it is true, had reached me; but it was no public function. Even by name the promoters were unknown to me; and yet somehow they had known for several years before I did that my man had been a soldier in the Crimea.

At the moment, however, it was Bettesworth's refusal of the invitation that most surprised me, although his alleged reasons were very good.

He so loved good cheer, and he had so few opportunities of enjoying it--the Oddfellows' dinner was the only other chance he ever had in any year--that I immediately suspected him of having been swayed in this instance by something else besides prudence. He sounded over-virtuous. And presently it struck me that there might have been something offensive to him in the way the invitation was given.

It had been received on the previous evening. He had just got round to the public-house, "'long of old White," when "a feller come in,"

inquiring for him. Bettesworth did not know the man; it was "somebody in a grey suit." "Stood me a gla.s.s of hot whisky-and-water, he did, and old White too." And, referring to Bettesworth's military service, "'What was ye?' he says. 'A man,' I says. He laughed and says, 'What are ye drinkin'?' 'Only a gla.s.s o' cold fo'penny,' I says." And Bettesworth seems to have said it in a very meek voice, subtly insinuating that "the feller" might stand something better.

I inferred, further, that Bettesworth's conscience was now p.r.i.c.king him for some incivility he had shown in declining the invitation. At any rate, he made a lame attempt, not otherwise called for, to prove that a self-respecting man would not humble himself to anyone upon whom he was not dependent. He had evidently been the reverse of humble; and possibly the invitation was patronizing, and raised his ire.

"Or else," he concluded, "I be purty near the only veteran left about here. There used to be Tom Willett and"--another whose name I have forgotten--"in the town, but they be gone, and I dunno who else there is. And I knows there's ne'er another in this parish. Dessay they'll get a few kiddies from Aldershot. 'Cause there's any amount o'