Others he says "have been inspired by that sort of apocryphal legend which is the inheritance of every country child who keeps his ears cocked when men are talking." He says that the publication of " The Death of Uncle Silas" produced a "larger volume of correspondence than any full-length book of mine has done before or since," in which the "resurrection of Uncle Silas" was demanded. Bates further discusses Silas and Joe Betts in Edward Garnett (51, attached).īates claims some of the stories to be "so near to reality that they needed only the slightest recolouring on my part" (namely " The Lily," " The Wedding," " The Revelation," " Silas the Good," and " The Death of Uncle Silas"). In the preface (attached), Bates says that the character of Silas as well as a number of the stories are firmly based on real events in the life of Joseph Betts, "late husband of my maternal grandmother's sister Mary Ann." Betts is described at greater length in Bates's Vanished World (60-61) as a "reprobate, rapscallion, crafty as a monkey, liar, gardener of much cunning, drinker of infinite capacity, afflicted with one blood-shot eye that gave him a look of devilish fascination." He is similarly described in Through the Woods (24-27), where Bates mentions that he underwent a serious operation at seventy-five and "went gaily on to live another fifteen years of aggravated wickedness and cunning." In each of these accounts and in the Silas stories, Bates recalls fondly his visits to Betts in his Bedfordshire cottage in the town of Sharnbrook. London: Jonathan Cape, 1939 (October 27).
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