PARTISAN REVIEW
-495
Burton had no time for the waywardness and irresponsibility of
youth , as if he had never had any himself. One of his sons, who
worked with him when he was grown up as a blacksmith down
the pit, would receive an occasional hard thump if he seemed to be
slacking on the job, or if some piece of wo rk wasn't up to a good
fit or a high polish.
Maybe he was jealous of youth, or bitter about the fact that
he had already lost it. Memory was a function wh ich he kept to
himself, a nd so to all others it seemed as if he had none, either
for good things or bad. H e neyer mentioned his father or his
mother, or talked about the "good old days." Speech, like sweat,
was valuable. Perhaps he really had forgotten his youth by the time
he had gone forty. H e appeared older to his sons than their friends'
fathers, though he was the same age, and looked just as young and
vigorous. But he was less approachable in a human and fatherly
manner, and if Burton did remembe r his own youth it was only so
that he could put t he experi ence of it to such good use that his own
children stood little chance of enj oying it in his presence. Everyone
agreed that his cunning was formidable.
Since Burton never talked about his own father no one ever
got any inkling of what he was like. H e died before my mother was
born , so she couldn·t tell me what sort of a person he was. Perhaps
he was more hum ane than Burton, who might have modeled him–
self on one of his grandfathers. But if this was so, and who it was,
I shall neyer know, for if your spade tri es to dig too far back it only
swings freely in the air.
When Burton wasn't present his sons and daughters always
referred to him by his surname, ne,"e r "Father" or " Ernest" - as
if he were a fi erce stranger who had been put in cha rge of them
by some mab"olent authority. It is possible that he didn' t model him–
self on anyone in particul ar, but simply emerged from the knotted
roots of his past, a nd was fini shed off by his own self-centered in–
violable opinion of himself, like a ny person of great strength or
extreme weakness.
U nlike many men of the present century he had never been in
the army. H e abominated such a n institution, and thought that
am one who joined or allowed himself to be ensnared into it was
eyen lower than a dog. H e neyer felt threa tened by any foreign
