I remember once walking from Alton to Petersfield, and passing unwittingly through Selborne. This was the Samuel Henley, D.D., that translated Beckford’s ‘Vathek’ from the French. She was hanged on 26th June 1815, for attempting to poison her master’s family; and her story, reprinted from ‘Maga,’ forms a chapter in Paget’s ‘Paradoxes and Puzzles’ (1874). That chapter I read to my father the summer before his death. It disappointed him, for he had always cherished the popular belief in her innocence. I am reminded of a case, long afterwards, where a clergyman had obtained a wealthy living on the condition that the retiring rector should, so long as he lived, receive nearly half the tithes. An aged man at the time the bargain was struck, that rector lived on and on for close upon twenty years; and his successor would ever and again come over to see my father, and ask his “advice.” “What could I advise him?” said my father; “for we live in Suffolk, not Venice, so a bravo is out of the question.” A writer in the ‘AthenÆum’ (I could make a shrewd guess at his name), after quoting the whist story, goes on: “Dr Belman was the country doctor who, on being asked what he thought of Phrenology, answered with equal promptitude and gravity, ‘I never keep it and never use it. But I have heard that, given every three hours in large doses, it has been very efficacious in certain cases of gout.’” In 1881 the population was exactly 400. Ten years before it had been 470, ten years later had sunk to 315. I don’t think it was Tom who employed that truly Suffolk simile—“I look upon this here chapel as the biler, yeou togither as the dumplins, and I’m the spoon that stars yeou up.” Nicknames are very common—“Wedgy,” “Shadder,” “Stumpy,” “Buskins,” “Colly,” &c. Seemed. Amazed. Word forgotten. Something. Thrandeston. Heard. Flung. Amazingly. Loins. Heat. Do you two. Head. Do you always keep. Dutfen, bridle in cart harness. This story is less unknown than its fellows, for in 1878 Mr FitzGerald got some copies of it reprinted at Woodbridge to give to his friends. I may well, however, republish it, for since the appearance of FitzGerald’s ‘Letters,’ in which it is referred to (pp. 427, 428), I have had many requests for copies,—requests with which I was unable to comply, myself having only one copy. Mawther, girl. Word. Do. Quiet. Halesworth. Something. Fr. journÉe, one day’s work without halt, ending about 3 p.m. Query, would not the burning of ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Bleak House’ by the common hangman do more to appease Nonconformist susceptibility than even Disestablishment? ‘Salem Chapel,’ again, and ‘Adam Bede.’ Fancy ‘Adam Bede ‘without Mr Irwine, who yet is not held up for a model parson. “Robin Cook’s wife” evidently refers to some well-known character, and is doubtless intended to personify “England.” The “old mare” is some old institution, and probably embodies the “Established Church.” The mare was not perfect. What institution is, that has its alloy of humanity? Lookers-on see these failings and stare. But the “sore back”! It evidently alludes to some special ailment, one which would make it difficult for any one to ride her. So an “old sack” was thrown over her. Some such measures have from earliest times been found necessary to enable each occupant of the different sees to keep his seat and maintain order. In older times “Canons” were made; of late other measures have been taken—e.g., “An Act for the Regulation of Divine Service.” The sack was then “hullt on,”—thrown on,—but roughly, not gently. This is noteworthy. “Corn in the sieve” evidently refers to some more palatable measure than the “old sack.” “Give her some oats, do not give her the sack only.” Perhaps the Ecclesiastical Commissioners may represent the present givers of corn. But all in vain, whether to enable the riders to mount on the “sore back,” or for prolonging her life. “She chanced for to die.” The Church disestablished. And lies in the highroad, a prize for all comers. But by “dead as a nit” evidently is meant more than disestablished; it means also disendowed. Else, what of “all the dogs in the town,” each craving and clamouring for his bone? It was so three hundred years ago. Each dog “spŏok for a bone,” and got it. “All but the Parson’s dog.” The poor vicars never got back a bit of the impropriate tithes; the seats of learning got comparatively little. The “dogs about town” got most. Then, in the last touching words, “the Parson’s dog he went wi’ none,” yet still singing, “Folderol diddledol, hidum humpf.” Something. Quiet. A copy of his will lies before me; it opens:—“In the name of God, Amen. I, Robinson Groome, of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, mariner, being of sound mind and disposing disposition, and considering the perils and dangers of the seas and other uncertainties of this transitory world, do, for the sake of avoiding controversies after my decease, make this my Will,” &c. Years before, FitzGerald and my father called together at Ufford. The drawing-room there had been newly refurnished, and FitzGerald sat himself down on an amber satin couch. Presently a black stream was seen trickling over it. It came from a penny bottle of ink, which FitzGerald had bought in Woodbridge and put in a tail-pocket. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald. (3 vols. Macmillan, 1889; 2d ed. of Letters, 2 vols. 1894.) Reference may also be made to Mr Wright’s article in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’; to another, of special charm and interest, by Professor Cowell, in the new edition of Chambers’s EncyclopÆdia; to Sir Frederick Pollock’s Personal Reminiscences; to the Life of Lord Houghton; to an article by Edward Clodd in the ‘English Illustrated Magazine’ (1894); to the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (1895); and to FitzGerald’s Letters to Fanny Kemble in ‘Temple Bar’ (1895). This was the hymn—its words, like the music, by my father—that is printed at the end of this volume. Reprinted in vol. ii. of the American edition of FitzGerald’s Works. That letter is one item in the printed and manuscript, prose and verse, contents of four big Commonplace Books, formed by the late Master of Trinity, and given at his death by Mrs Thompson to my father. They included a good many unpublished poems by Lord Tennyson, Frederic Tennyson, Archbishop Trench, Thackeray, Sir F. Doyle, &c. My father gave up the Tennysoniana to Lord Tennyson. Suffolk for “I daresay.” So I wrote six years since, and now a rose tree does grow over it, a rose tree raised in Kew Gardens from hips brought by William Simpson, the veteran artist traveller, from Omar’s grave at NaishÁpur, and planted here by my brother members of the Omar KhayyÁm Club on 7th October 1893 (‘Concerning a Pilgrimage to the Grave of Edward FitzGerald.’ By Edward Clodd Privately printed, 1894). I append throughout the page of the published letters that comes nearest in date. Mr Dove was the builder of Little Grange. His voice was unforgetable. Mr Mowbray Donne quotes in a letter this passage from FitzGerald’s published Letters: “What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn’t confute.” And he adds: “How good that is. I can hear him saying ‘which I couldn’t confute’ with a break on his tone of voice at the end of ‘couldn’t.’ You remember how he used to speak—like a cricket-ball, with a break on it, or like his own favourite image of the wave falling over. A Suffolk wave—that was a point.” Posh was the nickname of a favourite sailor, the lugger’s skipper, as Bassey was Newson’s. Posser, mentioned presently, was, Mr Spalding thinks, Posh’s brother, at any rate a fisherman and boatman, with whom Mr FitzGerald used to sail in Posh’s absence. A second-hand boat that Posh bought at Southwold before the building of the “Meum and Tuum.” This Levi it was, the proprietor of a fish-shop at Lowestoft, that used always to ask FitzGerald of the welfare of his brother John: “And how is the General, bless him?”
“How many times, Mr Levi, must I tell you my brother is no General, and never was in the army?”
“Ah, well, it is my mistake, no doubt. But anyhow, bless him.” An extra large mackerel.—Sea Words and Phrases. An odd contrast all this to the calmness with which your ordinary Christian discharges (his duty and) a drunken servant, or shakes off a disreputable friend. Compare the old folk rhyme—
“A whistling woman and a crowing hen
Are hateful alike to God and men.”
