BRITON THE MAN

During the last few years there has been a literary fashion for choosing what I tend to refer to as 'off-centre' subjects, or characters, as the basis for a book, most obviously fictional. It is a clever and useful device, for it allows the author to use his or her imagination often within the framework of a known structure. There is a delicate balance to be struck here, though, and thus a need for author responsibility, for a known actual event will have its own applecart, which is very easy to upset.
Some years ago, for example, and following a visit to Thailand and the river Kwai, I wrote a novel based on a fictional peacetime incident which, I decreed, had occurred on the infamous bridge. A number of former prisoners of war of the Japanese, held captive in the Kwai area, bought the book and hated it because it didn't tell the story they wanted to read.
'I can't remember that happening,' one said to me, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had made it up. Another protested, 'It weren't like that at all.' My protestations that it was a novel, and therefore that all of the events were a fiction, fell on deaf ears. Its sales therefore died an early death.
Thus off-centre tales - fictionalising not the main character, but someone in the background - can be tricky, though some authors, it seems, can carry it off. I am thinking particularly of the novel, The Paris Wife (based on one of the wives of Ernest Hemingway), and the book and film of, The Girl With the Pearl Earring (based on one of the models of the artist Vermeer).
My own off-centre interest for some time has been Briton, the Rev James Woodforde's 'man' who, according to the parson's diaries, joined his household staff at the rectory of Weston Longville in 1785.
Interesting chap, Briton, particularly when you begin to fictionalise his background. Even so, real puzzles remain. To begin with, why did the Rev Woodforde give him this nickname? There are various theories, which I won't go into now. But more interestingly, who as he? A local lad, perhaps, seeking to better himself? I confess it did come as a surprise, some time later, to realise that Briton's real name was Brettingham Scurll. So perhaps it was the surname Scurll that the Reverend didn't like, and declined to use. Nevertheless, he still sounded interesting, even though the trail immediately ran cold.
Then, suddenly, and several years' later, I found him. Or at least, I think I did. I happened to be browsing a copy of White's 1845 Norfolk (reprinted by David & Charles in 1969), flicking over the pages randomly, when quite suddenly I spotted him, the name leaping out at me. Page 355, in fact, under the directory listing for the village of Reepham. And there, among Reepham's tradesmen, was Brettingham Potter Scurll, baker, and Thomas Scurll, also a baker.
Was it the same Brettingham Scurll who, 43 years later, joined the parson's staff at Weston Longville? In which case Briton must have been a mature, even aged, fellow when he was taken on. Or was this Brettingham's father? Again, was it a family business. And who was Thomas?
I confess I don't know, and I may not take the matter any further. Not in terms of trying to write a novel about him, anyway. But I did find it fascinating to think that two unconnected volumes, one a modern concise copy of a 19th century parson's diaries, and the other, a 1960s reprint of a 19th century Norfolk trades directory, should link themselves together in such an off-centre sort of way.