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

He carried his point, too. As if he had no wife ill at home, at about eight o'clock, which was usually his bed-time, he came back and began his self-imposed task, with a young l...

Having got home and shifted a few things to Jack's, Bettesworth's great joy was in his "nice soft bed." He has been used to feathers, and found the mattress hard at the infirmar...

To get her downstairs the help of two men besides the driver was enlisted, Kate's husband being one of them. By a kindly policy, Bettesworth himself was sent to hold the horse (...

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...

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 subje...

Seeing that every winter now he was troubled with a cough, I may as well give here some undated sentences I have preserved, in which he described how he caught cold on one occas...

That, one would have supposed, should have almost ended the trouble; but though a man be dying it is not easy, under the existing Poor Law, to get him that help which the ratepa...

Besides, he wanted a cottage not a mile away, but near to his work, so that he might go home to dinner and see how his wife was getting on. If he was growing old, she was older;...

"Well--he's jest the age; jest on forty. I says to 'n, 'Some of 'em 'd go for you, if they knowed you was wantin' frost.' He laughed. 'We all speaks for ourselves, don't we?' he...

During this year 1901, until the last month or two, not much additional matter relating to Bettesworth was recorded; it just suffices to show his life quietly passing on in comp...

For eight months after this the account of Bettesworth's sayings and doings is all but a blank. There was one summer--and perhaps it was this one of the year 1900--when he joine...

The circumstance takes us out again from the peace of the garden to the crude struggle for life in the village. Looking back to that time, I can see our valley as it were sombre...

Were there any circumstances to give offence? Yes: "There's that Gunner, what used to live up the lane, struttin' about there, like Lord Muck, in his fine slippers. He's a wards...

But the worst trial of all was due to another and more pitiful cause. I could reconcile myself to indifferent crops--after all, I had enough--but exasperation was daily renewed...

"No, nor me. I dunno nothin' about 'n. He bin a sojer an' got a pension. He bin at work down at this Bordon. But his wife bin carryin' on purty much. Had another bloke about the...

Yet it was not his nature to be embittered. When the peas he had sown came up, though for another man's benefit, he looked across at them from this garden and admired them. They...

The men compare notes, and give and take sage advice. "Where I had that crop o' dwarf peas last year I be goin' to have carrots this," says one. Another answers, "Well, then, if...

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 ext...