Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: A Record of the Last Years of Frederick Bettesworth

Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: A Record of the Last Years of Frederick Bettesworth

Bettesworth, the old labouring man, who in the decline of his strength found employment in my garden and entertained me with his talk, never knew that he had been made the subject of a book. To know it would have pleased him vastly, and there is something tragical in the reflection that he had to wear through his last weary months without the consolation of the little fame he had justly earned; and yet it would have been a mistake to tell him of it. His up-bringing had not fitted him for publicity. On the contrary, there was so much danger that self-consciousness would send him boastfully drinking about the parish, and make him intolerable to his familiars and useless to any employer, that, instead of confessing to him what I had done, I took every precaution to keep him in ignorance of it, and sought by leaving him in obscurity to preserve him from ruin. Obscure and unsuspicious he continued his work, and his pleasant garrulity went on in its accustomed way. Queer anecdotes came from him as plentifully as ever, and shrewd observations. Now it would be of his harvesting in Sussex that he told; now, of an adventure with a troublesome horse, viii or an experience on the scaffolding of a building; and again he would gossip of his garden, or of his neighbours, or of the old village life, or would discuss some scrap of news picked up at the public-house. And as this went on month after month, although I had no intention of adding to the first book or writing a second on the same lines, still it happened frequently that some fragment or other of Bettesworth's conversation took my fancy and was jotted down in my note-book. But almost until the end no definite purpose informed me what to preserve and what to leave. The notes were made, for the most part, under the influence of whim only. Towards the end, however, a sort of progression seemed to reveal itself in these haphazard jottings. His age was telling heavily upon Bettesworth, and symptoms of the inevitable change appeared to have been creeping unawares into my careless memoranda of his talk. I do not know when I first noticed this: it probably dawned upon me very slowly; but that it did dawn is certain, and in that perception I had the first crude vision of the present volume. I might not aim to make another book after the pattern of the first, grouping the materials as it pleased me for an artistic end; but by reproducing the notes in their proper order, and leaving them to tell their own tale, it should be possible to engage as it were the co-operation of Nature herself, my own part being merely that of a scribe, recording at the dictation of events the process of Bettesworth's decay. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 42092
Author: Sturt, George
Release Date: Feb 13, 2013
Format: eBook
Language: English