There cannot be many people who unexpectedly discover a
forgotten novel bearing their own name. Yet that is precisely what happened to
me recently.
Quite by accident, I learned of a little-known novel
published in 1931 by His Honour Judge Ruegg KC entitled David Betterton.
Given the rarity of the surname Betterton, I was astonished that I had never
heard of it before. The discovery immediately raised a number of questions. Who
was David Betterton? Why had Ruegg chosen the name? And what sort of story lay
behind this curious literary namesake?
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| My Copy of Judge Ruegg's Novel |
The novel has long been out of print and appears to have escaped the attention of modern literary historians. Contemporary references describe it simply as "A Novel of Staffordshire," and one rather dismissive review in The Spectator [ Link here in new tab ] referred to blackmail, socialist villains, and dreams involving Queen Mab. The description sounded eccentric enough to provoke curiosity but gave little indication of the novel's deeper concerns. But of course, I hunted it down and bought a copy.
As I read through the novel, however, a more interesting
picture emerged.
The story begins not with David Betterton at all, but with a
young man named Fred Dominey. Leaving home in search of a future, he falls in
with a drifter named Jim Owlton. Penniless and desperate, the two decide to rob
a house. Owlton persuades Fred to carry out the burglary while he remains at a
safer distance.
Fred is caught.
At this point the novel takes an unexpected turn. The owners
of the house do not summon the police. Instead, they take pity on the young man
and allow him to go free. Legally, the matter ends there. Morally, however, it
has only begun.
Although forgiven, Fred cannot forgive himself. The guilt of
the attempted burglary follows him as he travels to London, where he hopes to
pursue a career on the stage. Through a series of fortunate connections, he
finds lodgings with a sympathetic couple whose theatrical contacts help him
gain a foothold in the profession. His talent is recognised, a manager takes
him under his wing, and he is given a new stage name: David Betterton.
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| Fred becomes David Betterton [ Click /Tap to enlarge ] |
The transformation appears complete. Fred Dominey disappears
and David Betterton rises to fame.
Yet the past has not vanished.
As Fred’s life as David Betterton flourishes, Jim Owlton reappears, impoverished but armed
with knowledge of the long-forgotten burglary. He begins a campaign of
blackmail that grows more demanding as David's success increases. The higher
the actor rises, the more vulnerable he becomes. Alongside this central
conflict run a love story and later experiences of military service during the
First World War.
The plot is a
melodrama. Yet beneath its surface lies a surprisingly coherent exploration of
guilt, identity and redemption.
The burglary itself is not really the subject of the novel.
It functions as the original moral wound from which everything else proceeds.
Fred's crime is serious, but Ruegg presents him less as a villain than as a
weak and impressionable young man led astray by a stronger and more
unscrupulous character. Jim Owlton, by contrast, becomes the embodiment of
corruption, feeding parasitically upon another man's success.
More significantly, the novel turns upon an act of mercy.
The household Fred attempts to rob chooses not to prosecute him. In
conventional crime fiction, punishment would provide the story's resolution.
Here, punishment never arrives. Instead, the burden passes inward. Fred's real
struggle is not with the law but with his conscience.
This perspective helps explain one of the novel's strangest
features: the recurring dreams of Queen Mab. At first glance these seem
whimsical, even eccentric. Yet they may serve a serious literary purpose.
Rather than functioning as fantasy for its own sake, the dreams appear to
externalise Fred's inner life, charting feelings of guilt, fear and
self-reproach that he cannot easily articulate in waking life.
The change of name is equally significant. Fred Dominey and
David Betterton are not merely two names for the same person. They represent
two identities. Fred is the private self, burdened by memory; David is the
public self, admired by audiences. The
tension between these identities becomes the novel's driving force. The more
successful David Betterton becomes, the greater the threat posed by Jim
Owlton's knowledge.
In this respect, the novel belongs to a familiar literary tradition. Like many stories of hidden pasts and divided identities, it asks whether a person can ever truly escape what he has done. One thinks of Great Expectations, where Pip cannot escape the origins he wishes to conceal, or even The Picture of Dorian Gray, where a secret history lurks behind a public persona. Can a new life erase an old failure? Can forgiveness received become forgiveness accepted?
The First World War is also interesting. David – and Jim – serve in the war, Ruegg uses military
service as a kind of moral testing ground. The war becomes a crucible in which
earlier social distinctions and personal failings are exposed or transformed.
These questions become all the more interesting when one
remembers that the author was a judge. Ruegg understood legal guilt
professionally. What seems to interest him here, however, is something beyond
the reach of courts. The law settles Fred's offence early in the novel. The
deeper consequences continue for hundreds of pages.
As for the name itself, Betterton is an uncommon surname with historical associations in both Gloucestershire and Staffordshire. That second possibility caught my attention because David Betterton as I mentioned earlier, is explicitly described as a "Novel of Staffordshire." If Judge Ruegg was writing about the Potteries and the surrounding district, then choosing the surname Betterton may not have been accidental at all. He may have regarded it as a recognisably local Staffordshire name.
It is also, of course, the surname of the celebrated Restoration actor Thomas Betterton. Given that David Betterton is a stage name adopted by an aspiring actor, one wonders whether Ruegg deliberately chose it for its theatrical resonance. Whether that is true or not, the choice seems unlikely to have been accidental. And it is clear that the name 'David' references the renowned 18th century actor David Garrick, as is made clear through the words of theatre manager Mr Abraham, who chooses the name in the story.
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| Portrait of Thomas Betterton |
Whatever the explanation, there was something delightful for me about encountering my own name unexpectedly in a obscure work of fiction. What began as a moment of curiosity became an exercise in literary archaeology. The result was not merely the discovery of a namesake, but of a novel – though melodramatic in tone and scope – nevertheless is more thoughtful and morally ambitious than its obscurity might suggest.
