My earliest recollections of FitzGerald go back to thirty-six years. He and my father were old friends and neighbours—in East Suffolk, where neighbours are few, and fourteen miles counts for nothing. They never were great correspondents, for what they had to say to one another they said mostly by word of mouth. So there were notes, but no letters; and the notes have nearly all perished. In the summer of 1859 we were staying at Aldeburgh, a favourite place with my father, as the home of his forefathers. They were sea-folk; and Robinson Groome, my great-grandfather, was owner of the Unity lugger, on which the poet Crabbe went up to London. When his son, my grandfather, was about to take orders, he expressed a timid hope that the bishop would deem him a proper candidate. “And who the devil in hell,” cried Robinson Groome, “should he ordain if he doesn’t ordain you, my dear?” [68] This I have heard my father tell FitzGerald, as also of his “Aunt Peggy and Aunt D.” (i.e., Deborah), who, if ever Crabbe was mentioned in their hearing, always smoothed their black mittens and remarked—“We never thought much of Mr Crabbe.”

Edward FitzGerald

Our house was Clare Cottage, where FitzGerald himself lodged long afterwards. “Two little rooms, enough for me; a poor civil woman pleased to have me in them.” It fronts the sea, and is (or was) a small two-storeyed house, with a patch of grass before it, a summer-house, and a big white figurehead, belike of the shipwrecked Clare. So over the garden-gate FitzGerald leant one June morning, and asked me, a boy of eight, was my father at home. I remember him dimly then as a tall sea-browned man, who took us boys out for several sails, on the first of which I and a brother were both of us woefully sea-sick. Afterwards I remember picnics down the Deben river, and visits to him at Woodbridge, first in his lodgings on the Market Hill over Berry the gunsmith’s, and then at his own house, Little Grange. The last was in May 1883. My father and I had been spending a few days with Captain Brooke of Ufford, the possessor of one of the finest private libraries in England. [69] From Ufford we drove on to Woodbridge, and passed some pleasant hours with FitzGerald. We walked down to the riverside, and sat on a bench at the foot of the lime-tree walk. There was a small boy, I remember, wading among the ooze; and FitzGerald, calling him to him, said—“Little boy, did you never hear tell of the fate of the Master of Ravenswood?” And then he told him the story. At dinner there was much talk, as always, of many things, old and new, but chiefly old; and at nine we started on our homeward drive. Within a month I heard that FitzGerald was dead.

From my own recollections, then, of FitzGerald himself, but still more of my father’s frequent talk of him, from some notes and fragments that have escaped hebdomadal burnings, from a visit that I paid to Woodbridge in the summer of 1889, and from reminiscences and unpublished letters furnished by friends of FitzGerald, I purpose to weave a patchwork article, which shall in some ways supplement Mr Aldis Wright’s edition of his Letters. [70] Those letters surely will take a high place in literature, on their own merits, quite apart from the interest that attaches to the translator of Omar KhayyÁm, to the friend of Thackeray, Tennyson, and Carlyle. Here and there I may cite them; but whoso will know FitzGerald must go to the fountain-head. And yet that the letters by themselves may convey a false impression of the man is evident from several articles on them—the best and worst Mr Gosse’s in the ‘Fortnightly’ (July 1889). Mr Gosse sums him up in the statement that “his time, when the roses were not being pruned, and when he was not making discreet journeys in uneventful directions, was divided between music, which greatly occupied his younger thought, and literature, which slowly, but more and more exclusively, engaged his attention.” There is truth in the statement; still this pruner of roses, who of rose-pruning knew absolutely nothing, was one who best loved the sea when the sea was rough, who always put into port of a Sunday that his men might “get their hot dinner.” He was one who would give his friend of the best—oysters, maybe, and audit ale, which “dear old Thompson” used to send him from Trinity—and himself the while would pace up and down the room, munching apple or turnip, and drinking long draughts of milk. He was a man of marvellous simplicity of life and matchless charity: hereon I will quote a letter of Professor Cowell’s, who did, if any one, know FitzGerald well:—

“He was no Sybarite. There was a vein of strong scorn of all self-indulgence in him, which was very different. He was, of course, very much of a recluse, with a vein of misanthropy towards men in the abstract, joined to a tender-hearted sympathy for the actual men and women around him. He was the very reverse of Carlyle’s description of the sentimental philanthropist, who loves man in the abstract, but is intolerant of ‘Jack and Tom, who have wills of their own.’”

FitzGerald’s charities are probably forgotten, unless by the recipients; and how many of them must be dead, old soldiers as they mostly were, and suchlike! But this I have heard, that one man borrowed £200 of him. Three times he regularly paid the interest, and the third time FitzGerald put his note of hand in the fire, just saying he thought that would do. His simplicity dated from very early times. For when he was at Trinity, his mother called on him in her coach-and-four, and sent a gyp to ask him to step down to the college-gate, but he could not come—his only pair of shoes was at the cobbler’s. And down to the last he was always perfectly careless as to dress. I can see him now, walking down into Woodbridge, with an old Inverness cape, double-breasted, flowered satin waistcoat, slippers on feet, and a handkerchief, very likely, tied over his hat. Yet one always recognised in him the Hidalgo. Never was there a more perfect gentleman. His courtesy came out even in his rebukes. A lady one day was sitting in a Woodbridge shop, gossiping to a friend about the eccentricities of the Squire of Boulge, when a gentleman, who was sitting with his back to them, turned round, and, gravely bowing, gravely said, “Madam, he is my brother.” They were eccentric, certainly, the FitzGeralds. FitzGerald himself remarked of the family: “We are all mad, but with this difference—I know that I am.” And of that same brother he once wrote to my father:—

Lowestoft: Dec. 2/66.

My dear Groome,—“At least for what I know” (as old Isaac Clarke used to say), I shall be at home next week as well as this. How could you expect my Brother 3 times? You, as well as others, should really (for his Benefit, as well as your own) either leave it all to Chance, or appoint one Day, and then decline any further Negotiation. This would really spare poor John an immense deal of (in sober Truth) “Taking the Lord’s Name in vain.” I mean his eternal D.V., which, translated, only means, “If I happen to be in the Humour.” You must know that the feeling of being bound to an Engagement is the very thing that makes him wish to break it. Spedding once told me this was rather my case. I believe it, and am therefore shy of ever making an engagement. O si sic omnia!—Yours truly,

E. F. G.

Of another brother, Peter, the Catholic brother, as John was the Protestant one, he wrote:—

Lowestoft, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1875.

You may have heard that my Brother Peter is dead, of Bronchitis, at Bournemouth. He was taken seriously ill on Thursday last, and died on Saturday without pain; and I am told that his last murmured words were my name—thrice repeated. A more amiable Gentleman did not live, with something helpless about him—what the Irish call an “Innocent man”—which mixed up Compassion with Regard, and made it perhaps stronger. . . .

Many odd tales were current in Woodbridge about FitzGerald himself. How once, for example, he sailed over to Holland, meaning to look upon Paul Potter’s “Bull,” but how, on arriving there, he found a favourable homeward breeze, and so sailed home. How, too, he took a ticket for Edinburgh, but at Newcastle found a train on the point of starting for London, and, thinking it a pity to lose the chance, returned thereby. Both stories must be myths, for we learn from his letters that in 1861 he really did spend two days in Holland, and in 1874 other two in Scotland. Still, I fancy both stories emanated from FitzGerald, for all Woodbridge united could not have hit upon Paul Potter’s “Bull.”

Except in February 1867, when he was strongly opposed to Lord Rendlesham’s election, he took no active part in politics. “Don’t write politics—I agree with you beforehand,” is a postscript (1852) to Frederic Tennyson; and in a letter from Mr William Bodham Donne to my father occurs this passage: “E. F. G. informs me that he gave his landlord instructions in case any one called about his vote to say that Mr F. would not vote, advised every one to do the same, and let the rotten matter bust itself.” So it certainly stands in the letter, which bears date 29th October 1868; but, according to Mr Mowbray Donne, “the phrase was rather: ‘Let the rotten old ship go to pieces of itself.’ At least,” he adds, “so I have always heard it; and this suggests that once there was a galleon worth preserving, but that he would not patch up the old craft. He may have said both, of course.” Anyhow, rightly or wrongly, FitzGerald was sorrowfully convinced that England’s best day was over, and that he, that any one, was powerless to arrest the inevitable doom. “I am quite assured that this Country is dying, as other Countries die, as Trees die, atop first. The lower limbs are making all haste to follow.” He wrote thus in 1861, when the local squirearchy refused to interest itself in the “manuring and skrimmaging” of the newly established rifle corps. And here are some more vaticinations of evil:—

“I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the Curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one’s own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her place. Had I Alfred’s voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In Memoriam and The Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived the Μαραθωνομαχους ανδρας to guard the territory they had won.”

The curtain has fallen twelve years now on FitzGerald,—it is fifty-four years since he wrote those words: God send their dark forebodings may prove false! But they clouded his life, and were partly the cause why, Ajax-like, he loitered in his tent.

His thoughts on religion he kept to himself. A letter of June 1885 from the late Master of Trinity to my father opens thus:—

“My dear Archdeacon,—I ought to have thanked you ere this for your letter, and the enclosed hymn, which we much admire, and cannot but be touched by. [76] The more perhaps as our dear dead friend seems to have felt its pathos. I have more to repent of than he had. Two of the purest-living men among my intimates, FitzGerald and Spedding, were prisoners in Doubting Castle all their lives, or at least the last half of them. This is to me a great problem,—not to be solved by the ordinary expedients, nor on this side the Veil, I think.”

A former rector of Woodbridge, now many years dead, once called on FitzGerald to express his regret that he never saw him at church. “Sir,” said FitzGerald, “you might have conceived that a man has not come to my years of life without thinking much of these things. I believe I may say that I have reflected on them fully as much as yourself. You need not repeat this visit.” Certain it is that FitzGerald’s was a most reverent mind, and I know that the text on his grave was of his own choosing—“It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” I know, too, that sometimes he would sit and listen in a church porch while service was going on, and slip away unperceived before the people came out. Still, it seems to me beyond question that his version of the ‘RubÁiyÁt’ is an utterance of his soul’s deepest doubts, and that hereafter it will come to be recognised as the highest expression of Agnosticism:—

“With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d—
‘I came like Water, and like Wind I go.’

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

* * * * *

We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.”

Yet to how many critics this has seemed but a poem of the wine-cup and roses!

FitzGerald proved a most kindly contributor to the series of “Suffolk Notes and Queries” that I edited for the ‘Ipswich Journal’ in 1877-78. The following were some of his notes, all signed “Effigy”—a play on his initials:—

“Major Moor, David Hume, and the Royal George.—In a review of Burton’s Life of Hume, p. 354 of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ April 1849, is the following quotation from the book, and the following note upon it:

“‘Page 452. “Major M---, with whom I dined yesterday, said that he had frequently met David Hume at their military mess in Scotland, and in other parties. That he was very polite and pleasant, though thoughtful in company, generally reclining his head upon his hand, as if in study; from which he would suddenly recover,” &c. [Note by the Editor, John Mitford of Benhall.] We merely add that Major M--- was Major Moor, author of the Hindoo Pantheon, a very learned and amiable person.’

“A very odd blunder for one distinguished Suffolk man to make of another, and so near a neighbour. For David Hume died in 1776, when Major Moor was about seven years old; by this token that (as he has told me) he saw the masts of the Royal George slope under water as she went down in 1782, while he was on board the transport that was to carry him to India, a cadet of thirteen years old.

“Nearly sixty years after this, Major Moor (as I also heard him relate) was among the usual company going over one of the Royal Palaces—Windsor, I think—when the cicerone pointed out a fragment of the Royal George’s mast, whereupon one elderly gentleman of the party told them that he had witnessed the disaster; after which Major Moor capped the general amazement by informing the little party that they had two surviving witnesses of it among them that day.

“Suffolk Minstrelsy.—These fragments of a Suffolk Harvest-Home Song, remembered by an old Suffolk Divine, offer room for historical and lyrical conjecture. I think the song must consist of tew several fragments.

“‘Row tu me, tow tu me,’ says He-ne-ry Burgin,
‘Row tu me, row tu me, I prah;
For I ha’ tarn’d a Scotch robber across the salt seas,
Tu ma-i-nt’n my tew brothers and me.’”

“The Count de Grasse he stood amaz’d,
And frigh-te-ned he were,
For to see these bold Bri-tons
So active in war.”

“Limb.—I find this word, whose derivation has troubled Suffolk vocabularies, quoted in its Suffolk sense from Tate Wilkinson, in ‘Temple Bar Magazine’ for January 1876. Mrs White—an actress somewhere in the Shires,—she may have derived from Suffolk, however—addresses her daughter, Mrs Burden, in these words: ‘I’ll tell you what, Maam, if you contradict me, I’ll fell you at my feet, and trample over your corse, Maam, for you’re a limb, Maam, your father on his deathbed told me you were a limb.’ (N.B.—Perhaps Mr White it was who derived from us.) And again when poor Mrs Burden asks what is meant by a parenthesis, her mother exclaims, ‘Oh, what an infernal limb of an actress you’ll make, not to know the meaning of prentice, plural of apprentices!’ Such is Tate’s story if correctly quoted by ‘Temple Bar.’ Not long ago I heard at Aldbro’, ‘My mother is a limb for salt pork.’”

The Suffolk dialect was ever a pet hobby of FitzGerald’s. For years he was meditating a new edition of Major Moor’s ‘Suffolk Words,’ but the question never was settled whether words of his own collecting were to be incorporated in the body of the work or relegated to an appendix. So the notion remained a notion. Much to our loss, for myself I prefer his ‘Sea-Words and Phrases along the Suffolk Coast’ (in the scarce ‘East Anglian,’ 1868-69 [81]) to half his translations. For this “poor old Lowestoft sea-slang,” as FitzGerald slightingly calls it, illustrates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries such as these:—

“Bark.—‘The surf bark from the Nor’ard;’ or, as was otherwise said to me, ‘The sea aint lost his woice from the Nor’ard yet,’—a sign, by the way, that the wind is to come from that quarter. A poetical word such as those whose business is with the sea are apt to use. Listening one night to the sea some way inland, a sailor said to me, ‘Yes, sir, the sea roar for the loss of the wind;’ which a landsman properly interpreted as meaning only that the sea made itself heard when the wind had subsided.”

“Brustle.—A compound of Bustle and Rustle, I suppose. ‘Why, the old girl brustle along like a Hedge-sparrow!’—said of a round-bowed vessel spuffling through the water. I am told that, comparing little with great, the figure is not out of the way. Otherwise, what should these ignorant seamen know of Hedge-sparrows? Some of them do, however; fond of birds, as of other pets—Children, cats, small dogs—anything in short considerably under the size of—a Bullock—and accustomed to birds-nesting over your cliff and about your lanes from childhood. A little while ago a party of Beechmen must needs have a day’s frolic at the old sport; marched bodily into a neighbouring farmer’s domain, ransacked the hedges, climbed the trees, coming down pretty figures, I was told, (in plainer language) with guernsey and breeches torn fore and aft; the farmer after them in a tearing rage, calling for his gun—‘They were Pirates—They were the Press-gang!’ and the boys in Blue going on with their game laughing. When they had got their fill of it, they adjourned to Oulton Boar for ‘Half a pint’; by-and-by in came the raging farmer for a like purpose; at first growling aloof; then warming towards the good fellows, till—he joined their company, and—insisted on paying their shot.”

“Cards.—Though often carried on board to pass away the time at All-fours, Don, or Sir-wiser (q.v.), nevertheless regarded with some suspicion when business does not go right. A friend of mine vowed that, if his ill-luck continued, over the cards should go; and over they went. Opinions differ as to swearing. One Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, ‘Swear away, lads, and see what that’ll do.’ Perhaps he only meant as MÉnage’s French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. ‘Well then, says the Bishop, just for this once then.’”

“Egg-bound.—Probably an inland word; but it was only from one of the beach I heard it. He had a pair of—what does the reader think?—Turtle-doves in his net-loft, looking down so drolly—the delicate creatures—from their wicker cage on the rough work below, that I wondered what business they had there. But this truculent Salwager assured me seriously that he had ‘doated on them,’ and promised me the first pair they should hatch. For a long while they had no family, so long ‘neutral’ indeed as to cause grave doubts whether they were a pair at all. But at last one of them began to show signs of cradle-making, picking at some hay stuffed into the wicker-bars to encourage them; and I was told that she was manifestly ‘egg-bound.’”

“New Moon.—When first seen, be sure to turn your money over in your pocket by way of making it grow there; provided always that you see her face to face, not through a glass (window)—for, in that case, the charm works the wrong way. ‘I see the little dear this evening, and give my money a twister; there wasn’t much, but I roused her about.’ Where ‘her’ means the Money, not the Moon. Every one knows of what gender all that is amiable becomes in the Sailor’s eyes: his Ship, of course—the ‘Old Dear’—the ‘Old Girl’—the ‘Old Beauty,’ &c. I don’t think the Sea is so familiarly addrest; she is almost too strong-minded, capricious, and terrible a Virago, and—he is wedded to her for better or worse. Yet I have heard the Weather (to whose instigation so much of that Sea’s ill-humours are due) spoken of by one coming up the hatchway, ‘Let’s see how she look now.’ The Moon is, of course, a Woman too; and as with the German, and, I believe, the ancient Oriental people, ‘the blessed Sun himself a fair hot Wench in a flame-colour’d taffeta,’ and so she rises, she sets, and she crosses the Line. So the Timepiece that measures the hours of day and night. A Friend’s Watch going wrong of late, I advised Regulating; but was gravely answer’d that ‘She was a foreigner, and he did not like meddling with her.’ The same poor ignorant was looking with me one evening at your fine old church [Lowestoft] which sadly wanted regulating too: lying all along indeed like a huge stranded Ship, with one whole side battered open to the ribs, through which ‘the Sea-wind sang shrill, chill’; and he ‘did not like seeing her so distress’d’; remembering boyish days, and her good old Vicar (of course I mean the former one: pious, charitable, venerable Francis Cunningham), and looking to lie under her walls, among his own people—‘if not,’ as he said, ‘somewhere else.’ Some months after, seeing the Church with her southern side restored to the sun, the same speaker cried, ‘Well done, Old Girl! Up, and crow again!’”

* * * * *

FitzGerald’s hesitancy about Major Moor’s book was typical of the man. I am assured by Mr John Loder of Woodbridge, who knew him well, that it was inordinately difficult to get him to do anything. First he would be delighted with the idea, and next he would raise up a hundred objections; then, maybe, he would again, and finally he wouldn’t. The wonder then is, not that he published so little, but that he published so much; and to whom the credit thereof was largely due is indicated in this passage from a letter of Mr W. B. Donne’s, of date 25th March 1876.

“I am so delighted at the glory E. F. G. has gained by his translation of the RubÁiyÁt of Omar KhayyÁm. The ‘Contemporary Review’ and the ‘Spectator’ newspaper! It is full time that Fitz should be disinterred, and exhibited to the world as one of the most gifted of Britons. And Bernard Quaritch deserves a piece of plate or a statue for the way he has thrust the RubÁiyÁt to the front.”

There is no understanding FitzGerald till one fully realises that vulgar ambition had absolutely no place in his nature. Your ass in the lion’s skin nowadays is the ass who fain would be lionised; and the modern version of the parable of the talents is too often the man who, untalented, tries to palm off Brummagem counterfeits. FitzGerald’s fear was not that he would write worse than half his compeers, but that he might write as ill. “This visionary inactivity,” he tells John Allen, “is better than the mischievous activity of so many I see about me.” He applied Malthus’s teaching to literature; he was content so long as he pleased the Tennysons, some half-dozen other friends, and himself, than whom no critic ever was more fastidious. And when one thinks of all the “great poems” that were published during his lifetime, and read and praised (more praised than read perhaps), and then forgotten, one wonders if, after all, he was so wholly wrong in that he read for profit and scribbled for amusement,—that he communed with his own heart and was still. Besides, had he not “awful examples”? There was the Suffolk parson, his contemporary, who announced at nineteen that he had read all Shakespeare and Milton, and did not see why he should not at any rate equal them. So he fell to work—his poems were a joy to FitzGerald. Then there was Bernard Barton. FitzGerald glances at his passion for publishing, his belief that “there could not be too much poetry abroad.” And lastly there was Carlyle, half scornful of FitzGerald’s “ultra modesty and innocent far-niente life,” his own superhuman activity regarded meanwhile by FitzGerald with a gentle half-pitying wonder, of which one catches a premonitory echo in this extract from a long letter [87] of Sir Frederick Pollock’s to W. H. Thompson. It bears date 14th February 1840, two years before Carlyle and FitzGerald met:—

“Carlyle’s ‘Chartism’ has been much read. It has fine things in it, but nothing new. He is eminently a man of one idea, but then neither he nor any one else knows exactly what that one is. So that by dint of shifting it about to and fro, and, as you observe, clothing his remarks in the safe obscurity of a foreign language, he manages to produce a great impression. Truly he is a trumpet that gives an uncertain sound, an instrument of no base metal, but played without book, whose compass is not ascertained, and continually failing from straining at too high a note. Spedding has not yet found him out; FitzGerald has, and we lamentably rejoice at our melancholy discovery. Never was there such a waste of Faith as in that man. He is ever preaching Faith. Very well, but in what? Why, again says he, ‘Faith’—that is, Faith in Faith. Objectless, purposeless, unmeaning, disappearing, and eluding all grasp when any occasion for action arises, when anything is to be done, as sufficiently appears from the miserable unpracticability of the latter chapters of the ‘Chartism,’ where he comes forward to give directions for what is to be done.”

FitzGerald’s wide, albeit eclectic reading, is sufficiently illustrated on every page of his published Letters. When, fourteen years before his death, his eyesight began to fail him, he employed boy-readers, one of whom read him the whole of the Tichborne trial. One summer night in 1889 I sat and smoked with this boy, a pleasant young man, in the bar-parlour of the Bull Hotel. He told me how Mr FitzGerald always gave him plenty of plum-cake, and how they used to play piquet together. Only sometimes a tame mouse would come out and sit on the table, and then not a card must be dropped. A pretty picture! In the bar-parlour sat an oldish man, who presently joined in our conversation. He had made the lead coffin for “the old Major” (FitzGerald’s father), and another for Mr John; and he seemed half to resent that he had not performed the same office for Mr Edward himself, for whom, however, he once built a boat. He told me, moreover, how years before Mr FitzGerald had congratulated him on some symptoms of heart disease, had said he had it himself, and was glad of it, for “when he came to die, he didn’t want to have a lot of women messing about him.”

Next day I went and called on FitzGerald’s old housekeeper, Mrs Howe, and her husband. She the “Fairy Godmother,” as FitzGerald delighted to call her, was blithe and chirpy as ever, with pleasant talk of “our gentleman”: “So kind he was, not never one to make no obstacles. Such a joky gentleman he was, too. Why, once he says to me, ‘Mrs Howe, I didn’t know we had express trains here.’ And I said, ‘Whatever do you mean, sir?’ and he says, ‘Why, look at Mrs ---’s dress there.’ And, sure enough, she had a long train to it, you know.” Her husband (“the King of Clubs”) was eighty-four, but the same cheery, simple soul he always was. Mr Spalding, one broiling day, saw him standing bare-headed, and peering intently for good five minutes into the pond at Little Grange. “What is it, Howe?” he asked him; and the old man presently answered, “How fond them ducks dew seem of water, to be sure.” Which, for some cause or other, greatly tickled FitzGerald.

I was staying in Woodbridge at the “Bull,” kept whilom by “good John Grout,” from whom FitzGerald procured the Scotch ale which he would set to the fire till it “just had a smile on it,” and who every Christmas sent him a present of mince-pies and a jug of punch. An excellent man, and a mighty horse-dealer, better versed in horse-flesh than in literature. After a visit from Lord Tennyson, FitzGerald told Grout that Woodbridge should feel itself honoured. John had not quite understood, so presently took a chance of asking my father who that gentleman was Mr FitzGerald had been talking of. “Mr Tennyson,” said my father, “the poet-laureate.” “DissÁy,” [90] said John, warily; “anyhow he didn’t fare to know much about hosses when I showed him over my stables.”

From my bedroom window I could see FitzGerald’s old lodgings over Berry’s, where he sojourned from 1860 till 1873. The cause of his leaving them is only half told in Mr Aldis Wright’s edition of the Letters (p. 365, footnote). Mr Berry, a small man, had taken to himself a second wife, a buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day—I have heard FitzGerald tell the story—came a timid rap at the door of his sitting-room, a deep “Now, Berry, be firm,” and a mild “Yes, my dear;” and Berry appeared on the threshold. Hesitatingly he explained that “Mrs Berry, you know, sir—really extremely sorry—but not been used, sir,” &c., &c. Then from the rear, a deep “And you’ve got to tell him about Old Gooseberry, Berry,” a deprecatory “Certainly, my love;” and poor Berry stammered forth, “And I am told, sir, that you said—you said—I had long been old Berry, but now—now you should call me Old Gooseberry.” So FitzGerald had to make up his mind at last to migrate to his own house, Little Grange, which he had bought more than nine years before, and enlarged and made a very pretty place of. “I shall never live in it, but I shall die there,” he once said to a friend. Both predictions were falsified, for he did live there nearly ten years, and his death took place at Merton, in Norfolk.

Little Grange

I wandered through the grounds of Little Grange, hardly changed except that there were now no doves. There was the “Quarterdeck” walk, and there was the Summerhouse, to which Charles Keene used to retire with his bagpipes. I can hear FitzGerald saying to my father, “Keene has a theory that we open our mouths too much; but whether he bottles up his wind to play the bagpipes, or whether he plays the bagpipes to get rid of his bottled-up wind, I do not know, and I don’t suppose I ever shall know.”

From Little Grange I walked two miles out to Bredfield Hall, FitzGerald’s birthplace. It is a stately old Jacobean mansion, though sadly beplastered, for surely its natural colour is red-brick, like that of the outbuildings. Among these I came upon an old, old labourer, who “remembered Mr Edward well. Why, he’d often come up, he would, and sit on that there bench by the canal, nivver sayin’ nothin’. But he took on wonnerful, that he did, if ivver they touched any of the owd trees.” Not many of them are standing now, and what there are, are all “dying atop.”

The Cottage, Boulge

It is a short walk from Bredfield Hall to Bredfield church and vicarage. Both must be a good deal altered by restoration and enlargement since the days (1834-57) of George Crabbe, the poet’s son, about whom there is so much in the Letters, and of whom I have often heard tell. He went up to the great Exhibition of 1851; and, after his return, my father asked him what he thought of it. “Thought of it, my dear sir! When I entered that vast emporium of the world’s commerce, I lifted up my arms and shouted for amazement.” From Bredfield a charming walk through the fields (trudged how many times by FitzGerald!) leads to the little one-storeyed cottage in Boulge Park, where he lived from 1838 till 1853. It probably is scarcely changed at all, with its low-pitched thatch roof forming eyebrows over the brown-shuttered windows. “Cold and draughty,” says the woman who was living in it, and who showed me FitzGerald’s old parlour and bedroom. The very nails were still in the walls on which he hung his big pictures. Boulge Hall, then tenantless, a large modern white-brick house, brought me soon to Boulge church, half-hidden by trees. Fitzgerald sleeps beneath its redbrick tower. His grave is marked by a flat granite monument, carved with a cross-fleury. Pity, it seemed, that no roses grew over it. [94]

Afterwards, for auld langsyne, I took a long pull down the Deben river; and next morning I visited Farlingay Hall, the farmhouse where Carlyle stayed with FitzGerald in 1855. It is not a farmhouse now, but a goodly old-fashioned mansion, red-tiled, dormer-windowed, and all covered with roses and creepers. A charming young lady showed me some of the rooms, and pointed out a fine elm-tree in the meadow, beneath which Carlyle smoked his pipe. Finally, if any one would know more of the country round Woodbridge, let him turn up an article in the ‘Magazine of Art’ for 1885, by Professor Sidney Colvin, on “East Suffolk Memories, Inland and Home.”

Farlingay Hall

But, besides this, I saw a good deal of Mr John Loder, third in a line of Woodbridge booksellers, who knew FitzGerald for many years, and has much to tell of him which were well worth preserving. From him I received a loan of Mr Elihu Vedder’s splendid illustrations to the ‘RubÁiyÁt,’ and a couple of presents. The first is a pencil-drawing of FitzGerald’s yacht; the second, a book, “made up,” like so many others, by FitzGerald, and comprising this one, three French plays, a privately printed article on Moore, and the first edition of ‘A Little Dinner at Timmins’s.’ Then with Mr Barrett, the Ipswich bookseller, who likewise knew FitzGerald, I had two chance meetings; and last but not least, I spent a most pleasant day at Colchester with Mr Frederick Spalding, curator now of the museum there.

Sitting in his alcove, hewn out of the massy wall of the Norman keep, he poured forth story after story of FitzGerald, and showed me his memorials of their friendship. This was a copy of Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Frank,’ in German and English, given to FitzGerald at Edgeworthstown (cf. ‘Letters,’ p. 74); and that, FitzGerald’s own school copy of Boswell’s ‘Johnson,’ which he gave Mr Spalding, first writing on the fly-leaf—“He was pleased to say to me one morning when we were alone in his study, ‘Boswell, I am almost easier with you than with anybody’ (vol. v. p. 75).” Here, again, was a scrap-book, containing, inter alia, a long and interesting unpublished letter from Carlyle to FitzGerald about the projected Naseby monument, and a fragment of a letter from Frederic Tennyson, criticising the Laureate’s “Welcome to Alexandra.” Not being a short-hand reporter or American interviewer, I am not going to try to reproduce Mr Spalding’s discourse (he must do that himself some day); but a letter of his in the ‘East Anglian’ of 8th July 1889 I will reprint:—

The fishing Lugger built at Lowestoft was named the “Meum and Tuum,” commonly called by the fishermen there the “Mum and Tum,” much to Mr FitzGerald’s amusement; and the ship alluded to by Mr Gosse was the pretty schooner of 15 tons, built by Harvey, of Wyvenhoe, and named the “Scandal,” after “the main staple of Woodbridge.” My friend, T. N., the skipper, gave a different account of the origin of the name. I was standing with him on the Lowestoft Fish Market, close to which the little “Scandal” was moored, after an early dive from her deck, when Tom was addressed by one of two ladies: “Pray, my man, can you tell me who owns that very pretty yacht?” “Mr Edward FitzGerald of Woodbridge, ma’am,” said Tom, touching his cap. “And can you tell us her name?” “The ‘Scandal,’ ma’am.” “Dear me! how came he to select such a very peculiar name?” “Well, ma’am, the fact is, all the other names were taken up, so that we were forced to have either that or none.” The ladies at once moved on.

Mr Spalding, further, has placed in my hands a bundle of seventy letters, written to himself by FitzGerald between 1862 and 1882. Some of them relate to mere business matters (such as the building of Little Grange), and some to private affairs; but the following extracts have a high and exceptional value, as illustrating a feature in FitzGerald’s life that is little touched on in the published Letters—his strong love of the sea and of sailors:—

“Geldestone Hall, Beccles, Feb. 5, 1862.
[‘Letters,’ p. 284.] [98]

“. . . I have been twice to old Wright, who has built a Boat of about 14 feet on speculation: and has laid down the keel of a new wherry, on speculation also. But he has as yet no Orders, and thinks his Business is like to be very slack. Indeed the Rail now begins to creep over the Marsh, and even to come pretty close to the River, over which it is to cross into Beccles. But you, I think, surmise that this Rail will not hurt Wright so much as he fears it will. Poor old Boy—I found him well and hearty on Sunday; but on Sunday night and Monday he was seized with such Rheumatism (I think Rheumatic Gout) in one leg as has given him no rest or sleep since. It is, he says, ‘as if somethin’ was a-tearin’ the Flesh off his Bones.’ I showed him two of the guilty Screws which had almost let my Leaden Keel part from the wooden one: he says he had desired the Smith not to make too large heads, and the Smith accordingly made them too small; and some Apprentice had, he supposes, fixed them in without further inspection. There is such honesty and cheerfulness in Wright’s Saxon Eyes and Countenance when he faces such a charge as disarms all one’s wrath.”

“11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft, July 17, ’65.
[‘Letters,’ p. 301.]

“. . . Yes, I sent Newson and Cooper home to the Shipwreck Dinner at Woodbridge, and supposing they would be maudlin on Saturday, gave them Sunday to repent on, and so have lost the only fine Days we have yet had for sailing. To-day is a dead Calm. ‘These are my Trials!’ as a fine Gentleman said to Wesley, when his Servant put rather too many Coals on the Fire.

“. . . Somehow, I always feel at home here,—partly that the place itself is very suited to me: I have known it these 40 years, particularly connected with my Sister Kerrich, whose Death has left a sort of sad interest shed over it. It was a mere Toss-up in 1860 whether I was to stay at Woodbridge, or come to reside here, when my residing would have been of some use to her then, and her Children now.

“Now then I am expecting my ‘Merry Men’ from Woodbridge, to get out my Billyboy, and get into what Sailors call the Doldrums, . . . ”

“3 Sion Hill, Ramsgate, August 25/65.
[‘Letters,’ p. 301.]

“I got here all right and very quick from our Harbour on Monday Morn^g. And here I shall be till Monday: then shall probably go with my Brother [Peter] to Dover and Calais: and so hope to be home by the middle or later part of next week. . . . To-day is going on a Regatta before the windows where I write: shall I never have done with these tiresome Regattas? And to-night the Harbour is to be captured after an obstinate defence by 36-pounders in a sham fight, so we shall go deaf to Bed. We had really a famous sail from Felixtow Ferry; getting out of it at 7 a.m., and being off Broadstairs (3 miles from here) as the clock on the shore struck twelve. After that we were an hour getting into this very Port, because of a strong Tide against us. . . .”

“11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft, March 28, 1866.
[‘Letters,’ p. 303.]

“. . . The change has been of some use, I think, in brightening me. My long solitary habit of Life now begins to tell upon me, and I am got past the very cure which only could counteract it: Company or Society: of which I have lost the Taste too long to endure again. So, as I have made my Bed, I must lie in it—and die in it. . . .”

“Lowestoft, April 2, ’66. [Ib.]

“. . . I am going to be here another week: as I think it really has freshened me up a bit. Especially going out in a Boat with my good Fletcher, though I get perished with the N.E. wind. I believe I never shall do unless in a Lodging, as I have lived these 40 years. It is too late, I doubt, to reform in a House of one’s own. . . . Dove, [101] unlike Noah’s Dove, brings no report of a green leaf when I ask him about the Grass seed. . . .”

“Lowestoft, April 3, ’66. [Ib.]

“. . . Looking over the Tombstones of the old Churchyard this morning, I observed how very many announced the Lease of Life expired at about the same date which I entered upon last Saturday [fifty-seven]. I know it is time to set one’s House in order—when Mr Dove has done his part.”

“Cowes, Isle of Wight, Friday, June 30, 1866.
[‘Letters,’ p. 305.]

“We got here very well on Tuesday even^g. Wednesday I sent Newson and Crew over to Portsmouth, where they didn’t see the one thing I sent them for, namely, Nelson’s Ship, the ‘Victory,’ but where they bought two Pair of Trousers, which they call ‘Dungaree.’ Yesterday we went to Poole—a place I had long a very slight Desire to see; and which was not worth the seeing. To-day we came back here: I regretting rather we had not run further along the Coast to Weymouth and Teignmouth, where I should have seen my Friend Mansfield the Shipwright. It was a little weakness of mine, in not changing orders, but, having talked of going only to Poole, I left it as it was. The weather has been only too fine: the sea too calm. Here we are in front of this pretty place, with many Yachts at anchor and sailing about us: nearly all Schooners, little and great, of all which I think we are the ‘Pitman’ (see Moor’s ‘Words’). I must say I am very tired of seeing only Schooners. Newson was beaten horribly yesterday by a Ryde open Boat of about 7 or 8 tons, which stood right into the wind, but he soon afterwards completely distanced a Billy-boy, which put us in Spirits again. I am very contented (in my way) pottering about here alone, or with my Crew of two, and I believe c^d bundle on for a Month in such a way. But I shall soon be home. I have thought of you To-day when your Sale is going on, at the same time as my Sail. Pretty Wit! . . .”

* * * * *

The next letter refers to an accident that befell the Scandal. She was lying at Lowestoft, in the Fishmarket basin, when a huge Continental steamer came drifting down on her. “Mr FitzGerald,” so Mr Spalding tells me, “just said in his slow melodious voice, [103] ‘My poor little ship will be cracked like a nutshell;’ and he took my arm to force me ashore. But I refused to go unless he went too, and just then the cable held on the weather-side of the steamer towering up above us; still, our ‘channel-boards,’ over which the shrouds are tautened, were crushed up flat to the yacht’s side, and perhaps some stanchions were injured too.”

“Scandal, Sept. 19, ’66. [Ib.]

“. . . Mr Manby is wrong about our getting no compensation for the Damage (so far as it c^d be seen) inflicted on us by the steamer. Whether we could claim it or not, the Steamer Captain granted it: being (as Newson says) quite a Gentleman, &c. So we have had the Carpenters for two Days, who have restored the broken Stanchions, &c. What mischief the Shock may have done to the Body of the Ship remains to be proved: ‘Anyhow, it can’t have done her any good,’ says Job’s Comforter, Captⁿ. Newson. The Steamer’s Captain admitted that he had expected us to be cracked like a Walnut.

“Now, I want you to tell me of this. You know of Newson’s lending Posh [104] money. I have advised that, beside an I.O.U. from Posh, he should give security upon some of his Effects: Boats, Nets, or other Gear. Tell me how this should be done, if you can: the Form of Writing required: and perhaps what Interest Newson should have on his Money.

“Last night at the ‘Suffolk’ I was where Newson, Posh, & Co. were at their Ale: a little of which got into Newson’s head: who began to touch up Posh about such an Apparatus of Rockets, Mortars, etc., for the Rescue of those two stranded Vessels, when he declares that he and one or two Felixstowe Men would have pushed off a Boat through the pauses of the Surf, and done all that was wanted. He had seen, and been on, the Shipwash scores of times when the jump of the Ship pitched him on his Back, and sent the Topmast flying. So had Posh on the Home-sand here, he said; his Sand was just as bad as Tom’s, he knew; and the Lowestoft Men just as good as the Felixstowe, &c. I fomented the Quarrel gently:—no Quarrel, or I should not: all Newson meant (which I believe is very true) there are so many men here, and no one Man to command, that they are worse off with all their Men and Boats than at the Ferry [Bawdsey], where Newson or Percival are Spokesmen and Masters. This I have explained to Posh To-day, as he was sitting, like Abraham, in his Tent—like an Apostle, mending his nets. ‘Posh, your Frill was out last night?’ ‘No—no—only I didn’t like to hear the Lowestoft Chaps weren’t as good, etc., especially before the Stranger Men from Harwich, etc.’”

“Lowestoft, October 7, ’66. [Ib.]

“. . . ‘Posh’ went off in his new, old Lugger, [105] which I call ‘The Porpoise,’ on Thursday: came in yesterday with a Last and a half of Herrings: and is just put to Sea again, Sunday though it be. It is reported to be an extraordinary Herring Year, along shore: and now he goes into deeper Water. I am amused to see Newson’s devotion to his younger Friend: he won’t leave him a moment if possible, was the first to see him come in yesterday, and has just watched him out of sight. He declined having any Bill of Sale on Posh’s Goods for Money lent; old as he is (enough to distrust all Mankind)—has perfect reliance on his Honour, Industry, Skill, and Luck. This is a pretty Sight to me. I tell Newson he has at last found his Master, and become possessed of that troublesome thing: an anxious Regard for some one.

“I was noticing for several Days how many Robins were singing along the ‘London Road’ here; and (without my speaking of it) Lusia Kerrich told me they had almost a Plague of Robins at Gelson [Geldestone]: 3 or 4 coming into the Breakfast room every morning; getting under Kerrich’s Legs, &c. And yesterday Posh told me that three came to his Lugger out at Sea; also another very pretty Bird, whose name he didn’t know, but which he caught and caged in the Binnacle, where it was found dead in due time. . . .

“P.S.—Posh (as Cooper, whom I question, tells me) was over 12 miles from Land when the four Robins came aboard: a Bird which he nor Cooper had ever seen to visit a Ship before. The Bird he shut up in the Binnacle he describes as of ‘all sorts of Colours’—perhaps a Tomtit!—and I fear it was roasted in the Binnacle, when Posh lighted up at night, forgetting his Guest. ‘Poor little fallow!’”

“Lowestoft, Dec. 4, 1866. [Ib.]

“I am sorry you can’t come, but have no doubt that you are right in not coming. You may imagine what I do with myself here: somehow, I do believe the Seaside is more of my Element than elsewhere, and the old Lodging Life suits me best. That, however, I have at Woodbridge; and can be better treated nowhere than there.

“I have just seen Posh, who had been shooting his Lines in the Morning: had fallen asleep after his Sunday Dinner, and rose up like a Giant refreshed when I went into his house. His little Wife, however, told him he must go and tidy his Hair, which he was preparing to obey. Oh! these are the People who somehow interest me; and if I were not now too far advanced on the Road to Forgetfulness, I should be sad that my own Life had been such a wretched Concern in comparison. But it is too late, even to lament, now. . . .

“There is a Wedding-party next door: at No. 11; I being in 12; Becky having charge of both houses. There is incessant vulgar Giggling and Tittering, and 5 meals a Day, Becky says. Oh! these are not such Gentlefolks as my Friends on the Beach, who have not 5 meals a Day. I wonder how soon I shall quarrel with them, however—I don’t mean the Wedding Party. . . . At Eight or half-past I go to have a Pipe at Posh’s, if he isn’t half-drunk with his Friends.”

“Lowestoft, Jan. 5/67. [‘Letters,’ p. 306.]

“I really was to have gone home To-day, but made a little Business with Posh an excuse for waiting over Sunday. This very Day he signs an Agreement for a new Herring-lugger, of which he is to be Captain, and to which he will contribute some Nets and Gear. I daresay I had better have left all this alone: but, if moderately lucky, the Vessel will pay something, at any rate: and in the meanwhile it really does me some good, I believe, to set up this little Interest here: and even if I lose money, I get some Fun for it. So now I shall be very glad to drop Esquire, and be addressed, as ‘Herring-merchant,’ for the future.

“Posh has been doing well this week with Cod-fishing, as only one other Boat has been out (owing to the others not having a Set-net to catch bait with). His fish have fetched a good price, even from the old Jew, Levi. [108] I believe I have smoked my Pipe every evening but one with Posh at his house, which his quiet little Wife keeps tidy and pleasant. The Man is, I do think, of a Royal Nature. I have told him he is liable to one Danger (the Hare with many Friends)—so many wanting him to drink. He says, it’s quite true, and that he is often obliged to run away: as I believe he does: for his House shows all Temperance and Order. This little Lecture I give him—to go the way, I suppose, of all such Advice. . . .”

“12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft, Feb. 8, ’67.
[‘Letters,’ p. 308.]

“Posh shall be at the Train for his Hare. When I went to look for him last Night, he was in his Shod, by the light of a Candle examining a Petman Pig [Suffolk for ‘the smallest pig in a litter’], about the size of Newson’s Watch, and swell’d out ‘as taut as a Drum,’ Posh said. A Friend had given him this Production of Nature: it hadn’t grown a bit (except swelling up) for 3 weeks, in spite of Posh’s Medicines last Sunday: so as he is ‘a’most minded to make away with it, poor little thing.’ He almost let it drop when I suddenly appeared, in a theatrical Style, at the Door.

“You seem to think there is no hurry about a Gardener [at Little Grange] just yet. Mr Berry still thinks that Miss ---’s man would do well: as it is, he goes out for work, as Miss --- has not full Employment for him. He and his Wife are very respectable too, I hear. So in spite of my Fear of Unprotected Females, &c., he might do. Perhaps you might see him one day as you pass the Unprotected one’s Grounds, and hear. I have hardly work enough for one Whole Man, as is the case with my Neighbour, who yet is a Female. . . .”

“‘Becky’s,’ Saturday, May 18, ’67. [Ib.]

“. . . Posh is very busy with his Lugger [the ‘Meum and Tuum’], which will be decked by the middle of next Week. I have just left him: having caught him with a Pot of white paint (some of which was on his Face), and having made him dine on cold Beef in the Suffolk Hotel Bowling-green, washing all down with two Tankards of Bullard’s Ale. He was not displeased to dine abroad; as this is Saturday, when he says there are apt to be ‘Squalls’ at home, because of washing, &c. His little Boy is on the mending hand: safe, indeed, I hope, and believe, unless they let him into Draughts of Air: which I have warned them against.

“Yesterday we went to Yarmouth, and bought a Boat for the Lugger, and paraded the Town, and dined at the Star Tavern (Beefsteak for one), and looked into the Great Church: where when Posh pulled off his Cap, and stood erect but not irreverent, I thought he looked as good an Image of the Mould that Man was originally cast in, as you may chance to see in the Temple of The Maker in these Days.

“The Artillery were blazing away on the Denes; and the little Band-master, who played with his Troop here last summer, joined us as we were walking, and told Posh not to lag behind, for he was not at all ashamed to be seen walking with him. The little well-meaning Ass! . . .”

“Lowestoft, Longest Day, ’67.
[‘Letters,’ p. 309.]

“. . . As to talking over Posh, etc., with me, there is plenty of time for that; indeed, as yet we cannot come to a final estimate of the Property, since all is not yet bought: sails, cables, warps, Ballast, &c. As to his services hitherto, I yesterday gave him £20, telling him that I couldn’t compute how much he had done for me: nor could he, he said, and would be contented with anything.

“No cloven Hoof as yet! It was his Birthday (yesterday), and we all had a walk to the new Lugger, and then to Mutford, where we had a fresh-water Sail on the Broad: Ale at the Inn, and Punch in the ‘Suffolk’ Bowling-green at night. Oh! ’tis a pleasant Time. But it passes, passes. I have not been out to Sea once since we’ve been here; only loitering about on shore.

“Lowestoft, April 14/68.
[‘Letters,’ p. 316.]

“. . . Meanwhile the Crews loiter about the Town: A. Percival, Frost, and Jack in his Kingfisher Guernsey: to whom Posh does the honours of the place. He is still busy with his Gear: his hands of a fine Mahogany, from Stockholm tar, but I see he has some return of hoseness. I believe that he and I shall now sign the Mortgage Papers that make him owner of Half Meum and Tuum. I only get out of him that he can’t say he sees anything much amiss in the Deed. He is delightful with his Babe, whose name is Clara—‘Hallo, Clara!’ etc. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Tuesday, June 16, 1868. [Ib.]

“. . . Thank you for the Books, which were all right: except in so far that they were anointed by the oozings of some Rhubarb Jam which Mrs Berry very kindly introduced among them. I am at my Don Quixote again; and really only sorry that I can read it so much more easily this year than last that I shall be all the sooner done with it. Mackerel still come in very slow, sometimes none at all: the dead-calm nights play the deuce with the Fishing, and I see no prospect of change in the weather till the Mackerel shall be changing their Quarters. I am vexed to see the Lugger come in Day after day so poorly stored after all the Labour and Time and Anxiety given to the work by her Crew; but I can do no more, and at any-rate take my own share of the Loss very lightly. I can afford it better than they can. I have told Newson to set sail and run home any Day, Hour, or Minute, when he wishes to see his Wife and Family. But at present he seems contented to eat Fish here: whether some of the few ‘Stulls’ [113] which Posh brings in, or what his now innumerable friends the Trawlers are always offering. In fact, I think Newson looks to Lowestoft as a Summer Pasture, and is in no hurry to leave it. He lives here well for nothing, except Bread, Cheese, and Tea and Sugar. He has now taken to Cocoa, however, which he calls ‘Cuckoo’ to my hearing; having become enamoured of that Beverage in the Lugger, where it is the order of the day. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Monday, July 13, ’68. [Ib.]

“. . . Posh made up and paid off on Saturday. I have not yet asked him, but I suppose he has just paid his way: I mean, so far as Grub goes. The Brother of one of his Crew was killed the night we got here, in a Lugger next to Posh’s, by a Barque running into her, and knocking him—or, I doubt, crushing him—overboard.

“. . . When are we to have rain? Last night it lightened to the South, as we sat in the Suffolk Gardens—I, and Posh, and Mrs Posh, and Sparks; Newson and Jack being with some other friends in another Department. Posh and I had been sauntering in the Churchyard, and reading the Epitaphs: looking at his own little boy’s Grave—‘Poor little Fellow! He wouldn’t let his Mother go near him—I can’t think why—but kept his little Fingers twisted in my Hair, and wouldn’t let me go; and when Death strook him, as I may say, halloo’d out ‘Daddy!’”

“Lowestoft, Sunday, Aug. 30, ’69.
[‘Letters,’ p. 318.]

“. . . You will see by the enclosed that Posh has had a little better luck than hitherto. One reason for my not going to Woodbridge is, that I think it possible this N.E. wind may blow him hither to tan his nets. Only please God it don’t tan him and his people first. . . .

“Lord and Lady Hatherley were here last week—no, this week: and I met them on the pier one day, as unaffected as ever. He is obliged, I believe, to carry the Great Seal about with him; I told him I wondered how he could submit to be so bored; on which my lady put in about “Sense of Duty,” etcetera-rorum. But I (having no Great Seal to carry) went off to Southwold on Wednesday, and lay off there in the calm nights till yesterday: going to Dunwich, which seemed to me rather delightful.

“Newson brought in another Moth some days ago; brownish, with a red rump. I dare say very common, but I have taken enormous pains to murder it: buying a lump of some poison at Southwold which the Chemist warned me to throw overboard directly the Moth was done for: for fear of Jack and Newson being found dead in their rugs. The Moth is now pinned down in a lucifer match box, awaiting your inspection. You know I shall be glad to see you at any time. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Sept. 4, ’69. [Ib.]

“I wish you were coming here this Evening, as I have several things to talk over.

“I would not meddle with the Regatta—to Newson’s sorrow, who certainly must have carried off the second £10 prize. And the Day ended by vexing me more than it did him. Posh drove in here the day before to tan his nets: could not help making one with some old friends in a Boat-race on the Monday, and getting very fuddled with them on the Suffolk Green (where I was) at night. After all the pains I have taken, and all the real anxiety I have had. And worst of all, after the repeated promises he had made! I said, there must now be an end of Confidence between us, so far as that was concerned, and I would so far trouble myself about him no more. But when I came to reflect that this was but an outbreak among old friends on an old occasion, after (I do believe) months of sobriety; that there was no concealment about it; and that though obstinate at first as to how little drunk, &c., he was very repentant afterwards—I cannot let this one flaw weigh against the general good of the man. I cannot if I would: what then is the use of trying? But my confidence in that respect must be so far shaken, and it vexes me to think that I can never be sure of his not being overtaken so. I declare that it makes me feel ashamed very much to play the Judge on one who stands immeasurably above me in the scale, whose faults are better than so many virtues. Was not this very outbreak that of a great genial Boy among his old Fellows? True, a Promise was broken. Yes: but if the Whole Man be of the Royal Blood of Humanity, and do Justice in the Main, what are the people to say? He thought, if he thought at all, that he kept his promise in the main. But there is no use talking: unless I part company wholly, I suppose I must take the evil with the good.

“Well, Winter will soon be here, and no more ‘Suffolk’ Bowling-greens. Once more I want you to help in finding me a lad, or boy, or lout, who will help me to get through the long Winter nights—whether by cards or reading—now that my eyes are not so up to their work as they were. I think they are a little better: which I attribute to the wearing of these hideous Goggles, which keep out Sun, Sea, Sand, &c. But I must not, if I could, tax them as I have done over books by lamplight till Midnight. Do pray consider this for me, and look about. I thought of a sharp lad—that son of the Broker—if he could read a little decently he would do. Really one has lived quite long enough.

“—will be very glad to show you his place at any time. His Wife is really a very nice Lady, and his Boy one of the nicest I have seen these 30 years. He himself sees wonderful things: he saw 2 sharks (supposed by Newson to be Sweet Williams) making love together out of the water at Covehithe; and a shoal of Porpoises tossing up a Halibut into the Air and catching it again. You may imagine Newson’s demure face listening to all this, and his comments afterwards. . . .”

“Suffolk Hotel, Lowestoft, Sept. 21, ’69. [Ib.]

“Thank you much for your Letter, which I got last night when I went for my usual dose of Grog and Pipe.

“Posh came up with his Lugger last Friday, with a lot of torn nets, and went off again on Sunday. I thought he was wrong to come up, and not to transmit his nets by Rail, as is often done at 6d. a net. But I did not say so to him,—it is no unamiable point in him to love home: but I think he won’t make a fortune by it. However, I may be very wrong in thinking he had better not have come. He has made about the average fishing, I believe: about £250. Some boats have £600, I hear; and some few not enough to pay their way.

“He came up with a very bad cold and hoarseness; and so went off, poor fellow: he never will be long well, I do think. I was foolish to forget G. Crabbe’s homoeopathic Aconite: but I sent off some pills of it to Grimsby last night. . . .”

“Lowestoft, March 2/70. [‘Letters,’ p. 324.]

“. . . Posh has, I believe, gone off to Southwold in hope to bring his Lugger home. I advised him last night to ascertain first by Letter whether she were ready for his hands; but you know he will go his own way, and that generally is as good as anybody’s. He now works all day in his Net-loft; and I wonder how he keeps as well as he is, shut up there from fresh Air, and among frowzy Nets. But he is in good Spirits; and that goes some way to keep the Body well, you know. I think he has mistaken in not sending the Meum and Tuum to the West this Spring, not because the Weather seems to promise in all ways so much better than last (for that no one could anticipate), but on account of the high Price of Fish of any sort; which has been an evident fact for the last six months. But I have not meddled, nor indeed is it my Business to meddle now. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Wednesday, Sept. 8, ’70.
[‘Letters,’ p. 323.]

“. . . Indeed, I only write now because I am shut up in my ship by rain, and so write letters.

“I had a letter from Posh yesterday, telling me he was sorry we had not ‘parted Friends.’ That he had been indeed ‘a little the worse for Drink’—which means being at a Public-house half the Day, and having to sleep it off the remainder: having been duly warned by his Father at Noon that all had been ready for sailing 2 hours before, and all the other Luggers gone. As Posh could walk, I suppose he only acknowledges a little Drink; but, judging by what followed on that little Drink, I wish he had simply acknowledged his Fault. He begs me to write: if I do so, I must speak very plainly to him: that, with all his noble Qualities, I doubt that I can never again have Confidence in his Promise to break this one bad Habit, seeing that he has broken it so soon, when there was no occasion or excuse: unless it were the thought of leaving his Wife so ill at home. The Man is so beyond others, as I think, that I have come to feel that I must not condemn him by general rule; nevertheless, if he ask me, I can refer him to no other. I must send him back his own written Promise of Sobriety, signed only a month before he broke it so needlessly: and I must even tell him that I know not yet if he can be left with the Mortgage as we settled it in May. . . .

“P.S.—I enclose Posh’s letter, and the answer I propose to give to it. I am sure it makes me sad and ashamed to be setting up for Judge on a much nobler Creature than myself. But I must consider this a case in which the outbreak was worse than needless, and such as must almost destroy any Confidence I can feel for the future. I can only excuse it as a sort of Desperation at his Wife’s Illness—strange way as he took of improving the occasion. You see it was not old Friends not seen for some time, but one or two of the Crew he is always with.

“I had thought of returning him his written Promise as worthless: desiring back my Direction to my Heirs that he should keep on the lugger in case of my Death. But I will wait for what you say about all this. I am really sorry to trouble you over and over again with the matter. But I am so fearful of blundering, where a Blunder may do so much harm. I think that Posh ought to be made to feel this severely: and, as his Wife is better, I do not mind making him feel it, if I can. On the other hand, I do not wish to drive him, by Despair, into the very fault which I have so tried to cure him of. Pray do consider, and write to me of this, returning me the two Papers.

“His mother did not try to excuse him at all: his Father would not even see him go off. She merely told me parenthetically, ‘I tell him he seem to do it when the Governor is here.’” [121]

“Lowestoft, Saturday, Feb. 25, 1871.
[‘Letters,’ p. 331.]

“. . . The two Hens travelled so comfortably, that, when let out of the basket, they fed, and then fought together. Your Hen was pronounced a Beauty by Posh & Co. As for mine, she stood up and crew like a Cock three times right on end, as Posh reports: a command of Voice in a Hen reputed so unlucky [122] that Mr and Mrs Fletcher, Senior, who had known of sad results from such unnatural exhibitions, recommended her being slain and stewed down forthwith. Posh, however, resolves to abide the upshot. . . . Posh and his Father are very busy getting the Meum and Tuum ready for the West; Jemmy, who goes Captain, is just now in France with a Cargoe of salt Herrings. I suppose the Lugger will start in a fortnight or so. My Eyes refuse reading here, so I sit looking at the sea (with shut eyes), or gossiping with the women in the Net-loft. All-fours at night. Thank you for the speckled Hen; Posh expressed himself much obliged for his. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Sunday, Sept. 29/72.
[‘Letters,’ p. 345.]

“. . . Posh—after no fish caught for 3 weeks—has had his boat come home with nearly all her fleet of nets torn to pieces in last week’s winds. On Wednesday he had to go 8 miles on the other side of Halesworth after a runaway—came home, drenched from top to toe, with a great Bulrush in his hand, which he could not help admiring as he went along: and went with me to the Theatre afterwards, where he admired the ‘Gays,’ as he called the Scenes; but fell asleep before Shylock had whetted his knife in the Merchant of Venice. . . .”

“Lowestoft, Friday, Jan. 9, 1874.
[‘Letters, p. 366.]

“. . . No doubt Berry thinks that his Month’s Notice, which was up last Monday, was enough. Against that I have to say, that, after giving that Notice, he told George Moor that I might stay while I pleased; and he drove me away for a week by having no one but his own blind Aunt to wait on me. What miserable little things! They do not at all irritate, but only bore me. I have seen no more of Fletcher since I wrote, though he called once when I was out. I have left word at his house, that, if he wishes to see me before I go, here am I to be found at tea-time. I only hope he has taken no desperate step. I hope so for his Family’s sake, including Father and Mother. People here have asked me if he is not going to give up the Business, &c. Yet there is Greatness about the Man: I believe his want of Conscience in some particulars is to be referred to his Salwaging Ethics; and your Cromwells, CÆsars, and Napoleons have not been more scrupulous. But I shall part Company with him if I can do so without Injury to his Family. If not, I must let him go on under some ‘Surveillance’: he must wish to get rid of me also, and (I believe, though he says not) of the Boat, if he could better himself.”

“Lowestoft, Sunday, Feb. 28, 1875.
[‘Letters,’ p. 370.]

“. . . I believe I wrote you that Fletcher’s Babe, 10 months old, died of Croup—to be buried to-morrow. I spoke of this in a letter to Anna Biddell, who has written me such a brave, pious word in return that I keep to show you. She thinks I should speak to Fletcher, and hold out a hand to him, and bid him take this opportunity to regain his Self-respect; but I cannot suppose that I could make any lasting impression upon him. She does not know all.”

“Woodbridge, Dec. 23/76.
[‘Letters,’ p. 396.]

“. . . I do not think there is anything to be told of Woodbridge News: anyhow, I know of none: sometimes not going into the Street for Days together. I have a new Reader—Son of Fox the Binder—who is intelligent, enjoys something of what he reads, can laugh heartily, and does not mind being told not to read through his Nose: which I think is a common way in Woodbridge, perhaps in Suffolk.”

“Woodbridge, March 31/79.
[‘Letters, p. 435.]

“. . . A month ago Ellen Churchyard told me—what she was much scolded for telling—that for some three weeks previous Mrs Howe had been suffering so from Rheumatism that she had been kept awake in pain, and could scarce move about by day, though she did the house work as usual, and would not tell me. I sent for Mr Jones at once, and got Mrs Cooper in, and now Mrs H. is better, she says. But as I tell her, she only gives a great deal more of the trouble she wishes to save one by such obstinacy. We are now reading the fine ‘Legend of Montrose’ till 9; then, after ten minutes’ refreshment, the curtain rises on Dickens’s Copperfield, by way of Farce after the Play; both admirable. I have been busy in a small way preparing a little vol. of ‘Readings in Crabbe’s Tales of the Hall’ for some few who will not encounter the original Book. I do not yet know if it will be published, but I shall have done a little work I long wished to do, and I can give it away to some who will like it. I will send you a copy if you please when it is completed.”

“11 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft, Wednesday.

“Dear Spalding,—Please to spend a Sovereign for your Children or among them, as you and they see good. I have lost the Faculty of choosing Presents, you still enjoy it: so do this little Office for me. All good and kind wishes to Wife and Family: a happy Xmas is still no idle word to you.”

“Woodbridge, Jan. 12, ’82.
[‘Letters,’ p. 477.]

“. . . The Aconite, which Mr Churchyard used to call ‘New Year’s Gift,’ has been out in my Garden for this fortnight past. Thrushes (and, I think, Blackbirds) try to sing a little: and half yesterday I was sitting, with no more apparel than in my rooms, on my Quarter-deck” [i.e., the walk in the garden of Little Grange].

“April 1, 1882. [‘Letters,’ p. 481.]

“Thank you for your Birthday Greeting—a Ceremony which, I nevertheless think, is almost better forgotten at my time of life. But it is an old, and healthy, custom. I do not quite shake off my Cold, and shall, I suppose, be more liable to it hereafter. But what wonderful weather! I see the little trees opposite my window perceptibly greener every morning. Mr Wood persists in delaying to send the seeds of Annuals; but I am going to send for them to-day. My Hyacinths have been gay, though not so fine as last year’s: and I have some respectable single red Anemones—always favourites of mine.

“Aldis Wright has been spending his Easter here; and goes on to Beccles, where he is to examine and report on the Books and MSS. of the late George Borrow at Oulton.”

* * * * *

The handwriting is shaky in this letter, and it is the last of the series. It should have closed this article, but that I want still to quote one more letter to my father, and a poem:—

“Woodbridge, March 16, 1878.
[‘Letters,’ pp. 410, 418.]

“My dear Groome,—I have not had any Academies that seemed to call for sending severally: here are some, however (as also AthenÆums), which shall go in a parcel to you, if you care to see them. Also, Munro’s Catullus, which has much interested me, bad Scholar as I am: though not touching on some of his best Poems. However, I never cared so much for him as has been the fashion to do for the last half century, I think. I had a letter from Donne two days ago: it did not speak of himself as other than well; but I thought it indicated feebleness.

“Eh! voilÀ que j’ai dÉjÀ dit tout ce que vient au bout de ma plume. Je ne bouge pas d’ici; cependant, l’annÉe va son train. Toujours À vous et À les vÔtres, E. F. G.

“By the by, I enclose a Paper of some stepping-stones in ‘Dear Charles Lamb’—drawn up for my own use in reading his Letters, and printed, you see, for my Friends—one of my best Works; though not exact about Book Dates, which indeed one does not care for.

“The Paper is meant to paste in as Flyleaf before any Volume of the Letters, as now printed. But it is not a ‘Venerable’ Book, I doubt. Daddy Wordsworth said, indeed, ‘Charles Lamb is a good man if ever good man was’—as I had wished to quote at the End of my Paper, but could not find the printed passage.”

* * * * *

The poem turned up in a MS. book of my father’s, while this article was writing. It is a version of the “Lucius Æmilius Paullus,” already published by Mr Aldis Wright, in vol. ii. p. 483 of the ‘Remains,’ but the two differ so widely that lovers of FitzGerald will be glad to have it. Here, then, it is:—

A Paraphrase by Edward FitzGerald of the Speech of Paullus Æmilius in Livy, lib. xlv. c. 41.

“How prosperously I have served the State,
And how in the Midsummer of Success
A double Thunderbolt from heav’n has struck
On mine own roof, Rome needs not to be told,
Who has so lately witness’d through her Streets,
Together, moving with unequal March,
My Triumph and the Funeral of my Sons.
Yet bear with me if in a few brief words,
And no invidious Spirit, I compare
With the full measure of the general Joy
My private Destitution. When the Fleet
Was all equipp’d, ’twas at the break of day
That I weigh’d anchor from Brundusium;
Before the day went down, with all my Ships
I made Corcyra; thence, upon the fifth,
To Delphi; where to the presiding God
A lustratory Sacrifice I made,
As for myself, so for the Fleet and Army.
Thence in five days I reach’d the Roman camp;
Took the command; re-organis’d the War;
And, for King Perseus would not forth to fight,
And for his camp’s strength could not forth be forced,
I slipped between his Outposts by the woods
At Petra, thence I follow’d him, when he
Fight me must needs, I fought and routed him,
Into the all-constraining Arms of Rome
Reduced all Macedonia.
And this grave War that, growing year by year,
Four Consuls each to each made over worse
Than from his predecessor he took up,
In fifteen days victoriously I closed.
With that the Flood of Fortune, setting in
Roll’d wave on wave upon us. Macedon
Once fall’n, her States and Cities all gave in,
The royal Treasure dropt into my Hands;
And then the King himself, he and his Sons,
As by the finger of the Gods betray’d,
Trapp’d in the Temple they took refuge in.
And now began my over-swelling Fortune
To look suspicious in mine eyes. I fear’d
The dangerous Seas that were to carry back
The fruit of such a Conquest and the Host
Whose arms had reap’d it all. My fear was vain:
The Seas were laid, the Wind was fair, we touch’d
Our own Italian Earth once more. And then
When nothing seem’d to pray for, yet I pray’d;
That because Fortune, having reach’d her height,
Forthwith begins as fatal a decline,
Her fall might but involve myself alone,
And glance beside my Country. Be it so!
By my sole ruin may the jealous Gods
Absolve the Common-weal—by mine—by me,
Of whose triumphal Pomp the front and rear—
O scorn of human Glory—was begun
And closed with the dead bodies of my Sons.
Yes, I the Conqueror, and conquer’d Perseus,
Before you two notorious Monuments
Stand here of human Instability.
He that was late so absolute a King
Now, captive led before my Chariot, sees
His sons led with him captive—but alive;
While I, the Conqueror, scarce had turn’d my face
From one lost son’s still smoking Funeral,
And from my Triumph to the Capitol
Return—return in time to catch the last
Sigh of the last that I might call my Son,
Last of so many Children that should bear
My name to Aftertime. For blind to Fate,
And over-affluent of Posterity,
The two surviving Scions of my Blood
I had engrafted in an alien Stock,
And now, beside himself, no one survives
Of the old House of Paullus.”

Myself, on the whole, I greatly prefer this version to Mr Aldis Wright’s: still, which is the later, which the earlier, it were hard to determine on internal grounds. For, as has befallen many a greater poet, FitzGerald’s alterations were by no means always improvements. One sees this in the various editions of his masterpiece, the ‘RubÁiyÁt.’ However, by a comparison of the date (1856) on the fly-leaf of my father’s notebook with that of a published letter of FitzGerald’s to Professor Cowell (May 28, 1868), I am led to conclude that my father’s copy is an early draft.

THE END.

printed by william blackwood and sons.