A5 Rolling Stonemason

T H E A U T H O R 1 R O L L I N G STONEMASON An Autobiography by F R E D B O W E R With a Foreword by J O H N B R O P H Y JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON 2 FIRST PUBLISHED 1936 JONATHAN CAPE LTD. 30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON AND 91 WELLINGTON STREET WEST, TORONTO PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN IN THE CITY OF OXFORD AT THE ALDEN PRESS PAPER MADE BY JOHN DICKINSON & CO LTD. BOUND BY A. W. BAIN &: CO. LTD. 3 CONTENTS FOREWORD 6 I A MASON BY HEREDITY 12 II BORN BOSTON REARD LIVERPOOL 15 III I BECOME A MASON 26 IV ADVENTURES AT SEA 41 V EMIGRANT TO U.S.A AND BACK 52 VI A CANADIAN BARN RAISING 61 VII I AM CONVERTED 75 V111 BEER -- AND MURDER 89 IX THE SECRET IN THE FOUNDATION STONE 100 X _ PIERPONT MORGAN AND 'CARRIE NATION 105 XI UPTON SINCLAIR AND OTHERS 139 XII ‘THE LONE SCOUT’ 161 XIII JIM LARKIN 172 XIV STRIKES AND TOM MANN 189 XV ‘BLOODY SUNDAY’ 209 XVI TRADE UNION DELEGATE 214 XVII FIGHTING AGAINST THE WAR 223 XVIII GOLD DIGGING IN AUSTRALIA 238 XIX SHIP’S FIREMAN, AGE 50 249 XX CARAVAN AND HUT 256 ILLUSTRATIONS THE AUTHOR frontispiece THE AUTHOR, OUTSIDE HIS SHED, 1933 264 4 5 FOREWORD BY JOHN BROPHY No one who makes a living by writing books and, as a sideline, reading and criticizing them, likes to receive letters from strangers - or indeed, from friends - asking him to read and advise upon unpublished manuscripts. The first few times it happens he may be flattered, but thereafter in self-defence he has to write a letter, usually in standardized form, regretting he cannot spare time for unpaid labour and pointing out that the publishers of this country are on the whole all too anxious to print manuscripts submitted to them. This has been my custom for some years, and as a hardened, perhaps indeed a crusty reviewer in the public press, my instinct is all to work against the influences which lift a composition out of manuscript into print and binding, and dump fifty or a hundred copies on the editorial shelves of newspapers, reviews and magazines. Nevertheless, I sponsored this autobiography with Mr. Cape and now that it is on the eve of publication I have no regrets. I am glad for Mr Bower’s sake - he will feel the legitimate author’s pride when he grasps his own volume, solid and comely in his hands - and for the sake of the professional critics and the reading public. To a very minor extent, by a recommendation and by a little editing, I have helped to bring what I consider a good book to the general notice, and I am proud of that. Mr. Bower, two months or so ago, wrote me a pencilled note asking me to read his autobiography, and the reasons why I had no impulse to send my customary refusal are still clear in my mind. He had not cast his personal experiences into the form of a novel - and I have 6 a horror of the hundreds of thousands of people who imagine that because it is easy to read novels it must be easy to write one. And he was not an undergraduate or a débutante, not even a nice girl staying at home to help mother and thinking it would be pleasant while she waits to get married to publish a novel or two. He was, he told me, a former stonemason, now living in a hut he had built with his own hands in a place I knew well - Heswall, in the Wirrall peninsula overlooking the sand-silted estuary of the Dee. It seemed to me that such a man in such circumstances might very well be unable to navigate the usual channels of approach to the publishing world, and might therefore legitimately appeal for advice to an author more or less established. It would be churlish to refuse to read his manuscript. But of course the really deciding factor was that I was taken by the salty, simple turns of phrase in that first letter signed Fred Bower, I had begun to like him already. So I Wrote back at once, but cautiously. Everyone who makes a book wears his heart on his sleeve, and if it is unpleasant for an author to receive adverse criticism it is almost as bad for a critic, driven by his conscience, to administer chastisement. (Indeed, I find that reviewing can be honestly practised only if the reviewer resolutely refuses to imagine that the authors he attacks have any real existence.) It was a hundred, if not a thousand, to one that this autobiography from a hut in Heswall was just another dud, so I wrote and told the author to expect no kind words from me, and further that I was so busy I could see no likelihood of being able to read the manuscript for at least a month. But when it came, a neat little bundle, it seduced me quickly and thoroughly. For two days I left it alone, and then I started reading, and having started I had to go 7 on, neglecting all my lawful occasions, till I had finished. I wrote a note of congratulation to the author, and said I would take the manuscript in to my own publisher. But I could not bear to think of Mr. Bower waiting day after day for the gratification of hopes I had aroused, so I again uttered a warning. No publisher, I said, made up his mind in less than six weeks. Mr. Cape, however, as I had secretly expected, yielded to the fascination almost as quickly as I did, and long before the period I had set was expired I was able to wire a good offer to the hut in Heswall. But by that time Mr. Bower had been evicted, his hut declared ‘unfit for human habitation’, at any rate in winter. He lives in a Liverpool suburb now, and regards his hut as his ‘summer residence’. I went north soon afterwards to confer with him over certain excisions and additions to the text. I found him, as a photograph had led me to expect, a man of sturdy build and independent air, florid-faced but with features firmly as well as delicately moulded, quick to laugh, always outspoken. We began our conference in a café, but quickly adjourned to a public-house round the corner. I should estimate that my capacity is one small whisky to Mr. Bower’s five pints of beer, and I have a most vivid recollection of him smiling at a tankard and saying, ‘Only for this stuff I should be a Member of Parliament by now - but I reckon I got the best o’ the bargain’. I hope no one will conclude from this reminiscence that either Mr. Bower or, I became intoxicated on that occasion. I write 8 only to indicate what manner of man he is, a convinced Socialist who has made his own education, a theorist who has practised an honourable craft all his life, a man of principle who relishes without doubts or reservations such of the good things of life as come his way. By the standards of most of the people who will read this book these good things have never been lavished upon him, and of late years they have arrived sparsely and uncertainly. But he has no grumbles. He has lived his life according to the best model, pouring out his energy and good-will without stint or thought for the morrow. He has made himself unmistakably a man of character, and at first glance one can well understand how this wandering, political stonemason has friends of all kinds, among politicians and artisans, poets and painters, journalists, suburban villa owners, and dozens of little children, for whom he writes his simple verses and carves his stone squirrels and gnomes. Of the content of this book it will be better for me to say nothing. The reader is entitled to get his own impressions at first hand. I enjoyed it, and I am sure thousands of others will. But about the editing, I must explain that, apart from dividing the book into chapters and increasing the number of paragraphs, I have altered scarcely a word, and then only to make an occasional obscurity clear. Certain parts of the original have been omitted, and others added, on my advice - but the work is all Mr. Bower’s. I hope there' will be some, like myself interested in English idiom and the subtleties of expression, who will be attracted not only by the substance but by the manner of this narrative. Here can be traced some tendencies of our time not often charted. Mr. Bower, for example, is a natural rhymester - he ends every letter to me with a 9 complimentary couplet. (And by the way, he often addresses me, born also on December 6th but twenty- eight years later, as ‘My dear Godfather’). To take a pleasure in the ordered chime and tunefulness of words is an accomplishment commoner than many people think. Mr. Bower is not a second W. H. Davies, but I think his verses are interesting enough to stand in the text. They are part of the man, and the man is representative of the age and the society in which he lives. But most fascinating of all, in my opinion, is the commingling of country and urban influences in the phrasing of his prose.

Load more