Read Ebook: Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer: A Record of the Last Years of Frederick Bettesworth by Sturt George

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it then no longer venerable, because it has ceased to be amiable? The onlooker should give an eye to his own point of view.

He looked white, weak, pathetically docile and kind, as he led the way from the kitchen door to the wood-shed, evidently desirous of a private talk.

He said he was "purty near beat, comin' over Saddler's Hill"; he had never before had such a job, having been forced to stop to get breath. It "felt like a lot o' mud in his chest; it was all slushin' and sloppin' about inside him, jest like a lot o' thick mud." But he had been worrying so: he wanted to pay me his rent. And then about his club pay--that worried him, too. He need not have worried? Ah, but he had done so, none the less; and Liz had said to him, "You better go up an' see about it, and you'll feel better when you got it off your mind"; or else he was hardly fit to be out in this cold wind. He had stayed indoors from Saturday afternoon until this morning. At tea-time, "about four o'clock yesterday," Liz had brought him a cup of tea with an egg beaten up in it, which had seemed to do him good. And she had got him half a quarte'n of whisky to hearten him up as he came away this morning. But he could not eat. "Law! they boys o' Jack's 'll eat three times what I do. I likes to see 'em. Jack says, 'What d'ye think o' that for a table?'" and indicates to Bettesworth the plentiful supply.

He produced two membership cards in support of his statements. The first was the same which Mrs. Eggar had brought me, at that time bearing no receipt later than February, 1904, but now certifying a further payment of 1s. 6d. up to August. The other was a new card, giving receipt in full to February of this year. To judge by the ink, these two receipts had been given at the same time; in other words, they had been obtained by Mrs. Eggar in return for the money duly paid in by her. But it took me long to satisfy Bettesworth that she had not "done" me out of three shillings on his behalf.

And then there was his rent, which had been running on all the time that he was at the infirmary. He had brought the money for that now, to get out of my debt.

He, however, found dishonesty in the neighbours, who have bought his household goods and now hang back with the purchase money. So cheap, too, he had sold his things! "That landlord at the Swan said 'twas givin' of 'em away.... But what could I do?" Bettesworth urged. His brother-in-law had advised him "not to stand out for sixpence; 't wa'n't as if they was new things," and had warned him against giving trust. But what could he do? Even as it was, the trouble of attending to the business had been too much for him in his weak state. So, one had had a table, and another two saucepans, and so on; and now he could not get the money. Instead of twenty-two shillings which should have been received on Saturday, he found himself with no more than five; and this morning only another five shillings had come in.

Yes, the people had "had" him; he was sure of that. There was "that Tom Beagley's wife.... She come to me Saturday sayin' Tom was on the booze and hadn't given her no money, so she couldn't pay me.... 'That's a lie,' our Tom says; 'he en't bin on the booze. He bin at work all the week, over here at Moorways.' So I told her I should have the things back, if she didn't pay me this mornin'." Other instances were generalized; Bettesworth thought himself cheated all round.

As we moved, "Wasn't it a day yesterday?" I remarked; and Bettesworth assented, "No mistake!" It had in fact been a Sunday of March gales, of furious rain and hail-storms, and then gay bursts of sunshine hurrying down the valley. With none to sweep it, the path where we stood was still bestrewn with a litter of dead twigs, which the east winds had left, but this fierce westerly wind had finally torn out from the lilac bushes. "It's a sort of pruning," I said, and was answered, "Yes, that must do a lot o' good. Done it better 'n you could ha' done, too." We found a sunny place, although still a draughty wind searched us out, and fast-changing clouds sometimes drew across the sunshine and left us shivering. "More showers," we predicted, "before the day is out."

"I en't got strength to cough," he replied. Then he put his hands against the pit of his stomach. "That's where it hurts me. Sims to tear me all to pieces." I advised care in feeding, and avoidance of solids. "Bread an' butter's the only solid food I takes," he said. "Liz wanted me to have a kipper. 'Naw,' I says, 'I en't much of a fish man.' But I don't want it. I en't got no appetite." It was suggested that the warm weather presently would restore him; but he returned, very quietly; "I dunno. I sims to think I shan't last much longer. I got that idear. I can feel it, somehow."

"How long have you felt like that?"

"This six weeks I've had that sort o' feelin'." He went on to repeat what he had said to Jack in consequence. When he had got his bed and other things into Jack's house, "'It's all yours now,' I says. 'You take everything there is. All you got to do is to see me put away.'"

His weakness was distressing to see, and he had to get back home somehow. Would a little more whisky help him? We adjourned to the kitchen, sat down there near the fire, and while the old man had his stimulant he talked of many things.

What to do about his cabbages puzzled him. He had paid old Carver Cook two shillings for digging the ground and planting them; and now that he had given up the cottage, there was this value like to be lost! He must get "whoever took the cot" to take to the cabbages too; they ought to. He didn't like to cut 'em down--never liked to do anybody else a bad turn, but.... Ultimately I promised to get the price allowed, in settling with his landlord.

Bettesworth's opinions on the war were tedious to me; he had so greatly misunderstood. He thought that, after Mukden, the Russians were retreating "right back into St. Petersburg," which would have been a retreat indeed!" But it ought to be stopped now"; the other Powers should interfere and say, "You've had your go in, and now you must get back into your own bounds." For the Japanese, of course, Bettesworth was full of admiration: "fighting without food!"... He exclaimed at their pluck and their prowess.

Gradually his own memories of war were awaking, and at last, "The purtiest little soldiers I ever see was the Sardinians." He described their smartness; their pretty tight-fitting uniform. "They camped 'longside o' we." Of their language "you could get to pick out a good many words" , "but it pestered 'em when they couldn't make ye understand.... But there, we was as bad.... Every nation has their own slang." The funniest Bettesworth ever heard was that of the Turks, "like a lot o' geese.... I remember once a lot of 'em come up over the hill by our camp, with about four hundred prisoners. They didn't let us have 'em, but was takin' 'em on to their own camp; but they was so proud for us to see, an' they was caperin' and cuttin' and dancin' about, jest like a lot o' geese."

He had been here nearly an hour, and at last I stood up. Bettesworth took the hint. He was looking the better for his whisky as he went off. But all the time, while he sat dreamily talking, he had had a very mild, placid, old man's expression, and all my harsher thoughts of him had quite slipped away.

He had seen the club doctor--Jack had fetched him on Sunday--"and you couldn't wish for a pleasanter gentleman. He sounded me all over," and sent out a plaster which "I'm wearin' now," Bettesworth said, "like one o' they poor-man's plasters." This reminded him of a similar one he had once had, of which he said that he "wore 'n for six months"; and truly the old-fashioned "poor-man's plaster" was always alleged to be unremovable. Once properly plastered, the patient had to earn his name and wait until the thing should wear or "rot off," as Bettesworth phrased it. How this six-months' plaster--right round his waist, and "wide as a leather belt"--had been "gored" by his "old mother-in-law, or else 't'd ha' tore flesh and all off," I will not spend time in relating.

Bettesworth had caught this new cold, he supposed, waiting for "they old women" to come and pay him for his furniture; who did not come to the old cottage at the time appointed, and kept him standing about. Nor have they yet paid all.

Not unhappily, but comfortably, he looked up to the mantelpiece and said, "There's my old clock." I recognized the dingy old gabled mahogany case; and the tick sounded familiar, reminding me of the other rooms where I had heard it, and of the old wife who had been alive then. "Mrs. Smith had my other," said Bettesworth, "and she en't paid for 't yet. I shall have 'n back, if she don't. Jack persuaded me to go an' get 'n back last week. 'That's all right,' I says, 'only I can't get there.' He wanted to go instead of me, but I wouldn't have that. He might get sayin' more 'n what he ought. But I shall have the clock back if she don't pay."

There also was his old mirror--he spoke of it--looking homely over the mantelpiece; and I heard of a few pictures saved, which Jack had taken out of their frames, to clean the glass, and had put back again. It seemed to be comforting to the old man to have these relics of his married life still about him; and in the midst of them he himself looked very comfortable; for, as his back was to the light , I could not see the flush on his face. So pleasant was it to find him at last beside a clean hearth, warm and tidy and well cared-for, that I could not refrain from congratulating him. Yes, he acknowledged his good fortune; he was swift to praise his niece. "She looks after me," he said warmly, "as well as if I was a child. I en't bin so comfortable since I dunno when." Perhaps never before in his life. "Before I was bad myself, there was the poor old gal. I went through something with she. When I was away at work, I was always wonderin' about her."

I had two shillings to hand over to him--the price obtained from his landlord for the cabbages left in the cottage garden; and in answer to inquiries as to his finances, he said that he had enough money to keep him going for a fortnight or so. But he was paying Jack for his board and lodging, and seemed fully alive to the desirability of continuing to do so.

Pleurisy and pneumonia or not--it was hard to believe that he had suffered from either, yet he had got hold of the words somehow-- Bettesworth was at no loss that afternoon for interesting subjects of conversation. An inquiry how his sister-in-law was faring led to a talk about her two sons, of whom one is out of work. The other, a basket-maker lives at home, and has just got a lot of work come in. "Mostly stock work," Bettesworth believed, "for some London firm he knows of." But besides this, he has a hundred stone jars from the brewery, to re-case with basket-work. The handles and bottoms are of cane, the rest "only skeleton work, as they calls it." Bettesworth always loved to know of technical things like this.

Odd it is, I suggested, how every trade has its own terms of speech. "Yes, and its own tools too," added Bettesworth; and with deep interest he spoke of the tools this basket-maker uses for splitting his canes, dividing them "as fine!" And the tools are "sharp as lancets; and every tool with a special name for it."

This reminded me to repeat to Bettesworth a similar account which a friend of mine had lately given me, and will publish, it may be hoped, of the Norfolk art of making rush collars. "Very nice smooth collars," Bettesworth murmured appreciatively. But when I proceeded to tell how the art is likely to die, because the few men who understand it keep their methods secret, this stirred him. "Same," he said, "as them Jeffreys over there t'other side o' Moorways, what used to make these little wooden bottles you remembers seein'. They'd never let nobody see how 'twas done. But I never heared tell of anybody else ever makin' 'em anywhere."

"These Jeffreys never done nothing else but make these bottles, and go mole-catchin'. Rare mole-catchers they was: earnt some good money at it, too. But they had to walk miles for it. You can understand, when the medders was bein' laid up for grass they had to cover some ground, to get all round in time. I've seen 'em come into a medder loaded up with a great bundle o' traps: an' then they'd begin putting' in the rods--'cause they was allowed to cut what rods they wanted for it, where-ever they was workin', and they knowed purty near where a mole 'd put his head up. 'Twas so much a field they got, from the farmer. I never knowed nobody else catch moles like they did, but they wouldn't show ye how they done it, or how they made their traps.

One other topic which we briefly touched upon must not be omitted. Before my arrival Bettesworth had crept out to the gate by the road, he was saying, tempted by the loveliness of the sunshine; and hearing of it, I warned him to have a care of getting out in this easterly wind. Ah, he said, we might expect east winds for the next three months now, for this was the 21st of March, and "where the wind is at twelve o'clock on the 21st of March, there she'll bide for three months afterwards." So he had once firmly held; and he mentioned the theory now, though apparently with little faith in it. For when I laughed, he said, "I've noticed it a good many times, and sometimes it have come right and sometimes it haven't. But that old Dick Furlonger was the one. He said he'd noticed it hunderds o' times. We used to terrify 'n about that, afterwards--'cause he was a man not more 'n fifty; and we used to tease 'n, so's he'd get up an' walk out o' the room."

During April I was away from home a good deal, and neither saw much of Bettesworth nor heard about him anything of importance. He seems to have recovered a little strength, to enable him to creep about the village when the weather was at all fit, but the drizzling rains and the raw chill winds of that spring-time were not favourable to the old man, who had almost certainly had a slight touch of pleurisy, if nothing worse, earlier in the year.

May, however, was not a week old before the weather brightened and grew splendid. The very sky seemed to lift in the serene warmth; and now, if ever he was to do so, Bettesworth should show some improvement.

At first it almost looked as if he might rally. I remember passing through the village, in the dusk of a Sunday evening , and there was Bettesworth, slowly toiling up the ascent to Jack's cottage, even at that late hour. It was too dark to distinguish his features, but by the lift of his chin and a suggestion of lateral curvature in his figure, I recognized him. He had been to the Swan, and was just going home, contented with his evening. The week that followed saw him here twice; and again on the 15th he came, and, finding me in the garden, was glad enough to be invited to a seat where he might rest.

And then as we sat there together it became clear to me that he would never again be any better than he was now. The sunshine was soft and pleasant, where it alighted on his end of the seat, and the shade of the garden trees at my end was refreshing, but to him no summer day was to bring its gifts of renewed life any more. When he arrived, I had expected that presently, after a rest, it would be his wish to go farther into the garden and see how the crops promised; but he made no offer to move. To get so far had been all that he could do. His thighs, as could be seen by the clinging of the trousers to them, were lamentably shrunken. His body was wasting: only his aged mind retained any of his former vigour.

A curious thing he told me, in connexion with the shrinking of his muscles. He had bared his thighs one evening, to show his "mates"--Bryant, George Stevens, and others--how thin they were; and by his own account the men had solemnly looked on at the queer piteous exhibition, acknowledging themselves shocked, and wondering how he could creep about at all. Bryant, by the way, had already told me of the incident, speaking compassionately. He added that Bettesworth offered to show his arms also, but that he had said, "No, Fred, you no call to trouble. I can take your word for it without seein'."

Sitting there weary in the sunshine, Bettesworth was in a melancholy humour. "A gentleman on the road," he said, had met him the previous day, and remarked "to his wife what was with him, 'That old gentleman looks as if he bin ill.' 'So he have,' old George Stevens says, cause he was 'long with me. He" "looked at my hands and says, 'Why, your hands looks jest as if they was dyin' off.' I dunno what he meant; but he called his wife and said, 'Don't his hands look jest as if they was dyin' off?' And she said so they did.... I dunno who he was: he was a stranger to me. But what should you think he meant by that?"

Mournfully the old man held out his knotted hand for my opinion. He was plainly worried by the odd phrase, and fancied, I believe, that the "gentleman" had seen some secret token of death in his hands.

The instinctive will to live was still strong in him, sustained by the conservatism of habit, and in opposition to his reason. According to Bryant, he said a day or two before this, "I prays for 'em to carry me up Gravel Hill"; and that is the way from his lodging to the churchyard.

There was Carver Cook, for instance. He was seventy-seven years old, and fretting because he was out of work. "I en't earnt a crown, not in these last three weeks," he had told Bettesworth. On the previous afternoon, just as it was beginning to rain, the two old men had met near the public-house, and gone in together out of the wet; and "Carver" standing a glass of ale, there they stayed until the rain slackened, and had a very happy, comfortable two hours. I asked what Bettesworth's old friend had to live upon.

It was pleasant enough to me to sit in the afternoon sunshine and hear this talk of village folk and outdoor doings, but after a little while I was called away, and did not see Bettesworth's departure. I should have watched it, if I had known the truth; for, once he had got outside the gate, he had set foot for the last time in this garden.

On reaching the cottage I found him in his bed upstairs. Certainly he had lost strength since I saw him. At first his voice was husky, and he was inclined to cry at his own feebleness; soon, however, he recovered his habitual quick, quiet speech, though a touch of weariness and debility remained in it. Stripping back the sleeve of his bed-gown he exhibited his arm: the muscle had disappeared, and the arm was no bigger than a young boy's. He shed tears at the sight, himself. Nor was he without pain. As he lay there that morning his legs, he said, had felt "as if somebody was puttin' skewers into 'em, right up the shins"; but he had rubbed vaseline over them, and after about half an hour the pain diminished. The doctor, visiting, had said "Poor old gentleman"; and, to him, not much more. "Old age--worn out," was the simple diagnosis he had furnished downstairs, to Liz.

Besides this unexpected friend, Bettesworth told me that a Colonel resident in the parish was moving on his behalf, endeavouring to get him a pension for his services in the Crimea. "But that en't no use," the old man said; "I en't got my papers," or at any rate he had not the essential ones. He tried to account for their disappearance: "Ye see, I've had several moves, an' this last one there was lots o' things missin' that I never knowed what become of 'em."

As Bettesworth lay in bed there upstairs, and unable to see much but his bedroom walls and their cheap pictures, for the window was rather high up and narrow, his mind was still out of doors. He inquired about several details in the garden; and particularly he wanted to know if a young hedge was yet clipped, in which he had taken much interest. It chanced that a man was working on it that afternoon; and Bettesworth's thought of it therefore struck me as somewhat remarkable. Evidently he was longing to see the garden; and though we did not know then that the desire would never be gratified, still that was the probability, and perhaps he realized it. He was a little tearful, as the time came for me to leave him.

After this I tried to make a point of seeing him once a week. Friday afternoons were the times most convenient, and the following Sunday commonly afforded the leisure for recording the visits. I give the accounts of them pretty much as they stand in my book.

For although on this Friday his usual garrulity about other topics than his illness was noticeably diminished, still in his handling of the subjects he did touch upon his strong mental grip was no wise impaired. From Alf Stevens, who helped him home, he went on to Alf's father, old George, who "en't so wonderful grand" in health, and to Alf's brother, who "boozes a bit," being out of work and unsettled, "or may wander off no tellin' where" in search of a job. Being now quartered at home, "he don't offer to pay his old father nothin'. P'r'aps of a Sat'day he'll bring home a joint o' meat.... But a very good bricklayer." Bettesworth has the whole situation in all its details under review before him. Moreover, this bricklayer out of work led him to speak of a serious matter, not previously known to me getting about the world, but to him lying in bed very well known--the alarming scarcity of work this summer. He named a number of men unemployed in the parish. I added another name to the list--that of a carpenter. "Ne'er a better tradesman in the district; but en't done nothin' for months," Bettesworth murmured unhesitatingly in his enfeebled voice. "And So-and-so" "is goin' to sack a dozen of his carters to-morrow, I'm told...."

The old man lay there, aware of these things; and as I write the thought crosses my mind that a valuable organizing force has been left undeveloped and lost in Bettesworth.

It looks more and more doubtful if he will linger on until the autumn.

In the morning, with extreme difficulty, and his niece helping him, Bettesworth had got into the front bedroom while his own bed was being made and his room cleaned. To that extent has he lost strength in the last few weeks. Sometimes his niece chides him for being so cast-down, but he says, "I can't help it, and 'ten't no use for anybody to tell me not. It hurts me to think that a little while ago I was strong and ready to do anything for anybody else, and now I got to beg 'em to come an' do anything for me."

I suspect that he gives some trouble. Fancies and the unreason characteristic of old age appear--for instance, about his food. He cannot take solids: they go dry in his mouth and he is unable to swallow them; yet he begged for some one to buy him a slice or two of ham the other day. He "seemed to have had a fancy for it this fortnight." All he takes, on his own evidence, is a little milk.

In telling this the old man suited his action to the tale, and again sat upright, his thin grey hair tumbled, his jaw fallen, his eyes hopeless for very weakness. It was then that he looked so much like old Hall.

He was wishing to be shaved, but could get nobody to do it for him. A labourer across the valley had been sent to: "He'd ha' come an' done it right enough, only he has rheumatics so bad he can't hold the razor."

I asked: "You never did much mowing yourself, did you?"

Thus for a little while Bettesworth chatted, in the vein that had first attracted me to him. Shall I ever hear him again, I wonder? We tried other subjects: the washed-out state of our lane and the best way to remedy it, the garden, the celery, the position of this or that crop. It entertained him for a few minutes; then he failed to seize some quite simple idea, and knew that he had failed, and said despondently, "I can't keep things in my mind like I used to."

He stiffened his head and neck and said, "Forty-eighth, and my number was three nought nought seven.... I could name twenty people that knowed about my service. There's old Crum Callingham. He used to work for Sanders then, the coal merchant. The day I came back, didn't we have a booze, too! He was at work in Sanders's hop-garden, and I found 'n out, and two more, and I kep' sendin' for half-gallons.... Yes, that was the same day as I got 'ome--from Portsmouth."

Since my last visit to him a fortnight ago, the change in him is very marked. His niece, downstairs, prepared me for it. He was very ill, she said, and so weak that now they have to hold him up to feed him. Of course he can take no solids; not even a mouthful of sponge-cake for which he had had a fancy. His feet and the lower parts of his body are swelling: the doctor says it is dropsy setting in, and reports further that his heart is "wasting away." Hearing all this--yes, and how Mrs. Cook thought he should be watched at night, for he could not last much longer--hearing this, I fancied when I got upstairs that there was a look as of death on the shrunken cheeks: they had a corpse-like colour. Possibly it was only my fancy, but it was not fancy that his flesh had fallen away more than ever.

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