FitzGerald having made up his mind to give Posh a lift by going into partnership with him began by finding not only the money for the building of the boat but a name for her when she should be ready for sea. It seemed to him that “Meum and Tuum” would be an appropriate name, and the Mum Tum is remembered along the coast to this day as a queer, meaningless title for a boat. At a later date FitzGerald is reported to have said that his venture turned out all Tuum and no Meum so far as he was concerned. But it is possible that Posh dealt more fairly with him than he thought. At all events Posh thinks he did.

The boat was to be paid for in instalments. So much on laying the keel, so much when the deck was on, etc., etc., and FitzGerald took the greatest interest in her building. He had first thought of christening the lugger “Marian Halcombe,” after Wilkie Collins’s heroine in The Woman in White, as appears from a letter to Frederic Tennyson, written in January, 1867 (Letters, II, 90, Eversley Edition):—

“I really think of having a Herring-lugger I am building named Marian Halcombe. . . . Yes, a Herring-lugger; which is to pay for the money she costs unless she goes to the Bottom: and which meanwhile amuses me to consult about with my Sea-folks. I go to Lowestoft now and then by way of salutary Change; and there smoke a Pipe every night with a delightful Chap who is to be Captain.”

Again on June 17th (Letters, II, 94, Eversley Edition) he wrote to the late Professor Cowell of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge:—

“I am here in my little Ship” (the Scandal) “with no company but my crew” (Tom Newson and his nephew Jack) “. . . and my other—Captain of the Lugger now a-building: a Fellow I never tire of studying—If he should turn out knave, I shall have done with all Faith in my own Judgment: and if he should go to the Bottom of the Sea in the Lugger—I shan’t cry for the Lugger.”

There was some delay in getting the deck planks on the lugger, for FitzGerald wrote to Mr. Spalding on May 18th, 1867 (Two Suffolk Friends, p. 110), that she would be decked “next Week,” whereas her planking was not finished till June, and, on a Friday in June, FitzGerald wrote to Posh:—

“Woodbridge, Friday.

“My dear Poshy,

“I am only back To-day from London, where I had to go for two days: and I am very glad to be back. For the Weather was wretched: the Streets all Slush: and I all alone wandering about in it. So as I was sitting at Night, in a great Room where a Crowd of People were eating Supper, and Singing going on, I thought to myself—Well, Posh might as well be here; and then I should see what a Face he would make at all this—This Thought really came into my mind.

“I had asked Mr. Berry to forward me any Letters because I thought you might write to say the Lugger was planked. But now you tell me it is no such thing: well, there is plenty of time: but I wished not to delay in sending the Money, if wanted. I have seen, and heard, no more of Newson; nor of his new Lugger from Mr. Hunt—I am told that one of the American yachts, The Henrietta, is a perfect Model: so I am going to have a Print of her that I may try and learn the Stem from the Stern of a Ship. If this North-Easter changes I daresay I may run to Lowestoft next week and get a Sail, but it is too cold for that now.

“Well, here is a letter, you see, my little small Captain, in answer to yours, which I was glad to see, for as I do not forget you, as I have told you, so I am glad that you should sometime remember the Old Governor and Herring-merchant

“Edward FitzGerald.”

It should be observed that in this letter, as in several of those written to Posh, FitzGerald signed his name, “Edward FitzGerald,” in full, a practice from which he was averse owing to certain facts connected with another Edward Fitzgerald. Those who have heard the story of the historic first meeting between the poet and the late Mr. Bernard Quaritch will remember why our FitzGerald disliked the idea of being confused with the other Edward Fitzgerald.

Posh and his old “Shud,” in which nets, etc., belonging to the partnership were stored, and where the letters now published were found

The letter here given forces a delightful picture upon us. Its simplicity makes it superbly graphic. Think of FitzGerald, refined in feature and reserved in manner, a little unconventional in dress, but not sufficiently so to be vulgarly noticeable—think of the man who has given us the most poetical philosophy and the most philosophical poetry, all in the most exquisite English, in our language, sitting probably at Evans’s (it sounds like Evans’s with the suppers and the music) and looking a little pityingly at the reek about him like the “poor old, solitary, and sad Man as he really was in spite of his Jokes”; and then imaging in his mind’s eye the handsome stalwart fisherman whom he loved so truly, and believing that he was as morally excellent as he was physically! “What a Face he would make at all this!” thought the poet.

Five or six years ago a good friend of mine, the skipper of one of the most famous tugs of Yarmouth, had to go up to town on a salvage case before the Admiralty Court. With him as witnesses went one or two beach men of the old school, wind-and sun-tanned old shell-backs, with voices like a fog-horn, and that entire lack of self-consciousness which is characteristic of simplicity and good breeding. My friend the skipper was cultured in comparison with the old beach men, and he was a little vexed when one old “salwager” insisted on accompanying him to the Oxford Music Hall. All went well till some conjurers appeared on the stage. Then the skipper found that he had made a mistake in edging away from the beach man. For that jolly old salt hailed him across the house. “Hi, Billeeoh! Bill Berry! Hi! Lor, bor, howiver dew they dew’t? Howiver dew they dew’t, bor? Tha’ss whoolly a masterpiece! Hi! Billeeoh! Theer they goo agin!”

The skipper always ends the story there. He is as brave a man as any on the coast. It was he who stood out in Yarmouth Roads all night to look for the Caistor life-boat the night of the disaster—a night when the roads could not be distinguished from the shoals, so broken into tossing white horses was the whole offing—but I believe he slunk down the stairs of the Oxford that night, and left the old beach man still expressing his delighted wonder.

Perhaps FitzGerald thought that Posh would be as excited as the old beach man.

“Mr. Berry” (as every one knows who knows anything about FitzGerald) was the landlord of the house on Markethill, Woodbridge, where the poet lodged. (By the way, he was, so far as I know, no relation of my Bill Berry.) A sum of £50 was due to Dan Fuller on the planking being completed, and FitzGerald was anxious to let Posh have the money as soon as it was needed. He “remembered his debts” even before they became due.

I have already stated that Hunt was a boat-builder at Aldeburgh, and that FitzGerald had, at first, wished Posh to employ him to build the Mum Tum, as the Meum and Tuum was fated to be called.

The kindly jovial relations between the “guv’nor” and his partner could not be better indicated than by the name FitzGerald gives himself at the close, just before he once more signs his name in full. Well, perhaps the legal luminary of Lowestoft would justify his inquiry if Edward FitzGerald was the man who made a lot of money out of salt by saying, “Well, he called himself a herring-merchant.”

The schoolmaster who had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar KhayyÁm would (according to the nature of the breed) sniff and say “What? A herring-merchant and a tent-maker! My boys are the sons of gentlemen. I can’t be expected to know anything about tradesfolk of that class.”

But Posh has a sense of humour, and he says, “Ah! He used to laugh about that, the guv’nor did. He’d catch hold o’ my jersey, so” (here Posh pinches up a fold of his blue woollen jersey), “and say, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear, Poshy! Two F’s in the firm. FitzGerald and Fletcher, herring salesmen—when Poshy catches any, which isn’t as often as it might be, you know, Poshy!’ And then he’d laugh. Oh, he was a jolly kind-hearted man if ever there was one.”

And then Posh’s eyes will grow moist sometimes, I think perhaps with the thought that he might—ah, well! It’s too late now.

Posh wishes me to give the dimensions of the lugger, as she was of his own designing and proved a fast and stiff craft. He had given her two feet less length than her beam called for, according to local ideas, and FitzGerald called her “The Cart-horse,” because she seemed broad and bluff for her length. She was forty-five feet in length, with a fifteen-foot beam and seven-foot depth. She was first rigged as a lugger, but altered to the more modern “dandy” (something like a ketch but with more rake to the mizzen and with no topmast on the mainmast) before she was sold. Any one about the herring basins who has arrived at fisherman’s maturity (about sixty years) will remember the Mum Tum, and, so far as she was concerned, the partnership was entirely successful, for no one has a bad word to say for her.