PARTISAN
REVIEW
-493
he could bend an iron bar, and twist steel - in which case he
might not have been as unfeeling as many people accused him of
being. Nevertheless, he was irascible and unpredictable, as unbending
to others as he was rigorous with himself.
He was born in 1868, and his power came out of the strength
of the working arm.
It
enabled him to provide bread and shelter
for his family, when lack of labor and effort meant starvation or
the workhouse. He swore that everyone but he was idle. Everyone
but he was, in his favorite phrase, '·as soft as shit." But while his
wife and eight children were said to hate and fear him he was re–
spected by others because he was a good blacksmith, winning many
prizes in Nottinghamshire and neighboring counties as a first-class
farrier. He had a showcase full of exhibition horseshoes in his
kitchen, and I have one of them on
my
des:, as I write. He was
said to have such a steady hand and eye that he could even shoe
"Old Nick's nag so that all four hoofs would come back complete
out of Hell." Known in the trade as a careful worker, his forge and
workshop were kept absolutely neat and tidy, since he was a man
who always had to know exactly where everything was, something
his own father had instilled into him as a youth, but which con–
tinually made tension when he applied this rule to his house.
Burton kept pigs, poultry and pigeons, and dug a good garden
of vegetables. Every Friday night when he came home from work
he labored with a great iron shit-bucket from the outhouse opposite
the kitchen door and carried it behind the cottage, up to the end
of the garden for fertilizer. He had a gun and could shoot well, in
spite of one eye being dead.
I knew him well, for he was only sixty when I was born. The
memories I've kept have thrived on all else I've heard about him.
But even his children are getting to be old men and women, and
his grandchildren are middle agel: . He loved his children, until they
began to grow up and show what they were made of, revealing
traits they had inherited from something over which he had no
contro!'
If
they came from him, he put them down with more than
necessary harshness. Apart from this he became a terror to them
because his initial love had made them timid, and he couldn't stand
any soul that was timid.
His daughters fared badly becau"e he expected them to follow
