Part 2 (1/2)
The e 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 I was you, I should dig that ground up now--rake off the stones” (carrots being ”a very tender herbage”) ”Then, if it comes rain, that'll settle it a bit After that, let it bide an' settle for about another fortnight, and then as soon as you gets a shower shove 'em in as fast as youme this, ”if you don't let it settle the drill sows 'e you wants to sow as shallow as ever you can”
Somebody informs the company that he had ”quarter of a acre o' carrots last year, and he made five pound of 'em” Or was it that he had five tons, and sold thes a ton? This was it, as Bettesworth at last remembers
”I 'spose you'll soon be puttin' in soot most o' mine in a'ready”
”_Have_ ye? I en't sowed none yet, but”
So says Tom Durrant, the landlord
”But cert'nly,” as Bettesworth observes, ”down there where he is it do take the frost so--right over there in Moorway's Bottoit taters in You see, where they lays about they spears so, and then the spears gits knocked off--you _can't_ help it; or, if not, still, where you sees a tater speared so, that must weaken that tater? About two foot two one way and fifteen inches t'other--that's the distance I gen'ly plants taters Ten't no good leavin' 'em wider 'tween the rows But old Steve Blackman, up there by the Forest, I knowed he once plant soit! 'Twas a piece o'
ground his landlord let 'n have for the breakin' of it up And he trenched in a lot o' fuzz--old fuzz-bushes as high as you be--and so on Everything went in And such a crop o' taters as he had--no, no dressin' Only this old fuzz-stuff _Regents_, they was Oh, that was a splendid tater, too! But you never hears of 'eot some o' these here _Dunbars_, down here I should like to see half a bushel o' they in this bit o' ground o'
yourn Splendid croppin' tater they be I ast Tom Durrant if he could spare you half a bushel He said he didn't hardly know There's so many bin after 'em--purty near half the parish They be a splendid croppin' tater, no in with, I reckon Reg'lar one he is, you know, for gettin' taters an' things, and markin' 'em and keepin' the sorts separate He had four to start with, an' they produced a peck Then he got three bushel out o' that peck And last year he sowed 'eot thirty-nine bushel”
II
_May 13, 1896_--The Tom Durrant just mentioned was frequently spoken of by Bettesworth, and always in a tone of war together the pieces,” but not assued his public-house well, and with especial attention to the co uns come in hollerin' about, 'twas very soon 'Outside!' with Tom
'There is the door!' he'd say 'I don't keep my 'ouse open for such as you'”
So Bettesworth has told me, more than once--perhaps not exactly in those words
But sometimes Bettesworth's talk was too thick with detail to be remembered and written down as he said it in the time at my disposal; whence it happens that I am able only to summarize an anecdote about Durrant, which Bettesworth told with considerable relish The publican was the owner of two cottages which were supplied ater froes had lately been overhauled and enlarged--Bettesworth detailed tothe new sculleries and sheds that had been added--and then the tenants, as if stricken with ed a complaint with the sanitary inspector The inspector insisted that the well should be cleaned out
Durrant thereupon examined the water, found it ”clear as crystal,”
cleaned out the well as he was ordered to do, and--gave the tenants notice to pay sixpence a week et ly
After all, this was but a kind of parenthesis in a talk which, not hurried, but quietly oozing out as orked side by side in the garden, fairly overwhelmed my memory with variety of subject and vividness of expression At one time it dealt with a certain road which was to be widened--”all they beautiful trees to be cut down, right from so-and-so to so-and-so”; at another, it discussed three parcels of building land for sale in the vicinity, estie, and related the offers which had been alreadyall the while, Bettesworth would wander off to the drought, and I would hear how long this or that neighbour had been without water; how a third (whose new horse, by the way, ”was turnin'
out well--but there, so do all they that comes from” a certain source, where, however, ”they works 'eed to keep his old horse al water, since he had twenty-two little pigs, besides other live anioodness knows, and so did Bettesworth At the new schools, again, the water was failing; and how, and why, and what the caretaker thought, and all about it, Bettesworth was able to explain
The receptivity of the man's brain hat struck me One pictured it pinked and patterned over with thousands of unsorted facts--legions of theement Yet all were available to him; at will he could summon any one of them into his consciousness A modern man would have had to stop and sift and compare them, and build theories and syste hts were like the dust-atoh he did not ”think,” still a vast common-sense somehow or other flourished in him, and these manifold facts were its food
_September 26, 1896_--Nor was it only of current topics that he could talk with such fullness of detail Getting shortly afterwards into the re s he had observed h fashi+on My hasty jottings, made afterwards, preserve only a few points, and do not tell how any of thestoke Fair, ”where they goes to hire theirselves for the year” Of ”shepherds with a bit o'
wool in their hats, carters with a bit o' whipcord, and servant gals,”
and so on ”I went once,” said Bettesworth, ”when I was a nipper--went away froah! They carters, when they've jest took their year's in' 'racks,' as they calls it 'You bin an' changed your rack, Bill?' 'What rack be you got on to?' 'You got on for old Farmer So-and-so?' There they be, hollerin' about And then they all got their shi+llin', what bin hired”
I did not stop then to consider whether this hiring shi+lling, and the token in the hat, ht have any relationshi+p, in the world of old custo” and the bunch of ribbons of the recruit for the ar; and presently it was about a certain Jack Worthington, of a neighbouring village, as known as ”Cunnin' Jack,” and played the concertina at fairs, clubs, and so on: ”Newbury Fair, Reading Fair, Basingstoke Fair”--Bettesworth essayed to catalogue theood many--travellin' folk and the like--say as they never heared anybody play the concertina like him He's the on'y one 's ever I heared play the church bells--chimes, an' fire 'em, and all--wonderful! _Blue Bells of Scotland_, too--to hear him play that, an' the chimes, jest exact! No trouble to 'larOne of 'e what he scratches along ires, sounds purty near like a fiddle 'Ten't no good for 'n in a town, 'less 'tis a fair or suets to a fair, there'll be three or four landlords about tryin' to get hold of 'n; and they'll give 'n five shi+llin's and supper, and his drink an' a bed, an' what he can pick up besides Very often he'll ht(?) And when he co with 'n Never no silver, o' course Often, when his wife thought he hadn't got nothing but a pound or so, he'd chuck her five or six pound Then in the winter he'd go gravel-diggin', onless there co o' the likes o'
that At these pubs where they dances, too, he'd put round the hat after every dance, an' if there was a good many stood up, p'r'aps he'd pull in half-a-crown or so”
Cunnin' Jack had a contrivance of -dolls, about which I did not clearly understand And I have quite forgotten how Bettesworth spoke of the man's brother, a deaf-mute, who refused to work, and ”lived about at Aldershot, along o' the soldiers”
Afterwards another ”du feller Spiteful Goes gravel-cartin' with his father” At a difficult place in the gravel-pit the father reached out and struck his son's horse The ”du a noise ”'bu-bu,' like a calf Sure way to upset 'n--if you was in the gravel pit, touch his hoss”