MEMOIRS OF A SURREY LABOURER

MEMOIRS OF A SURREYLABOURER

A RECORD OF THE LAST YEARS OF
FREDERICK BETTESWORTH

GEORGE BOURNE
AUTHOR OF "THE BETTESWORTH BOOK"

LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1907

All rights reserved.

TO MY FRIEND
CHARLES YOUNG

vii

INTRODUCTION

Bettesworth, the old labouring man, who in thedecline of his strength found employment in mygarden and entertained me with his talk, neverknew that he had been made the subject of a book.To know it would have pleased him vastly, andthere is something tragical in the reflection that hehad to wear through his last weary months withoutthe consolation of the little fame he had justlyearned; and yet it would have been a mistake totell him of it. His up-bringing had not fitted himfor publicity. On the contrary, there was so muchdanger that self-consciousness would send himboastfully drinking about the parish, and make himintolerable to his familiars and useless to any employer,that, instead of confessing to him what Ihad done, I took every precaution to keep him inignorance of it, and sought by leaving him inobscurity to preserve him from ruin.

Obscure and unsuspicious he continued his work,and his pleasant garrulity went on in its accustomedway. Queer anecdotes came from him as plentifullyas ever, and shrewd observations. Now itwould be of his harvesting in Sussex that he told;now, of an adventure with a troublesome horse,viiior an experience on the scaffolding of a building;and again he would gossip of his garden, or of hisneighbours, or of the old village life, or would discusssome scrap of news picked up at the public-house.And as this went on month after month, although Ihad no intention of adding to the first book orwriting a second on the same lines, still it happenedfrequently that some fragment or other of Bettesworth'sconversation took my fancy and was jotteddown in my note-book. But almost until the endno definite purpose informed me what to preserveand what to leave. The notes were made, for themost part, under the influence of whim only.

Towards the end, however, a sort of progressionseemed to reveal itself in these haphazard jottings.His age was telling heavily upon Bettesworth, andsymptoms of the inevitable change appeared tohave been creeping unawares into my carelessmemoranda of his talk. I do not know when Ifirst noticed this: it probably dawned upon me veryslowly; but that it did dawn is certain, and in thatperception I had the first crude vision of the presentvolume. I might not aim to make another bookafter the pattern of the first, grouping the materialsas it pleased me for an artistic end; but by reproducingthe notes in their proper order, and leavingthem to tell their own tale, it should be possible toengage as it were the co-operation of Nature herself,my own part being merely that of a scribe, recordingat the dictation of events the process of Bettesworth'sdecay.

To this idea, formed a year or so before Bettesworth'six<

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