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EDWARD FITZGERALD
AN AFTERMATH
6oo copies of this book have
been printed on Van Gelder
hand -made paper and the
type distributed.
/^
EDWARD FITZGERALD: AN
AFTERMATH BY FRANCIS
HINDES GROOME WITH MISCEL-
LANIES IN VERSE AND PROSE
PRINTED FOR THOMAS B. MOSHER AND
PUBLISHED BY HIM AT XLV EXCHANGE
STREET, PORTLAND MAINE MDCCCCII
CONTENTS
FORKWORD ......
THE TARNO RYE (fRANXLS HINDES GROOMe)
BY THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
EDWARD FITZGERALD: AN AFTERMATH
BY FRANCIS HINDES GROOME
MISCELLANIES : IN VERSE AND PROSE
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS :
I. THE MEADOWS IN SPRING
II. OCCASIONAL VERSES
III. BREDFIELD HALL
IV. CHRONOMOROS
V. virgil's garden
VI. TRANSLATION FROM PF:TRARCH
VII. ON THE DEATH OF BERNARD BARTON
VIII. THE TWO GENERALS
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB .
THE ONLY DARTER
" MASTER CHARLEY " .
CONCERNING A PILGRIMAGE TO THE GRAVE OI
EDWARD FITZGERALD ....
P.\GE
ix
xvii
i
25
95
TOO
105
1 10
118
119
1 2 I
129
135
141
•45
28168:]
ILLUSTRATIONS
i edward fitzgerald
2 francis hindes groom e
3 mary frances fitzgerald
4 bredfield hall
5 fitzgerald's cottage at boulge
6 farlingay hall
7 the port of woodbridge
8 Fitzgerald's yacht ' scandal '
9 market hill, woodbridge
lo little grange, woodbridge
i i boulge churchyard
12 Fitzgerald's grave at boulge
FACSIMILE of AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER
PROEM
PROEM
CANN'Ol' sufficiently thank you for the
high and unmerited honour you have done
me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an
occasion^ with such company., my place is
belo7ii the salt ; but as you kindly ini'ited me., it was 7wt in
human nature for me to refuse.^
Although in knowledge and comprehension of the two
great poets whom you are met to comme7norate I am the
least among you, there is no one who regards them with
greater admiration, or reads them with more enjoyment,
than myself I can 7ie'cer forget my emotiojis when 1 first
saw FitzGerahPs translations of the Quatrains. Keats, in
his sublime ode on Chapman'' s Ilomer, has described the
sensation once for all : —
' At a dinner of the 07nar Ktiayydni Club in London, ( Deeember
8t/t, fSgj), The Hoiourahle Jolin Hay wlio /tad been introduced by Mr.
Henry Norman as ' soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet, and Omarian,'
dilivered the following address, pronounced by all who heard it ' a
masterpiece of literary oratory.^
PROEM
" Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
The exquisite beauty., the faultless form, the singular grace
of those amazing stanzas., were not more tvonderfiil than
the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their
knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing
of the ultimate problems of life and of death. Of course the
doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as
ignorant as I zvas of the literature of the East, whether it
was the poet or his translator to whom ivas due this
splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of an
antique song, or a mystificatioji of a great modern, careless
of fame, and scornful of his time 1 Could it be possible
that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khorassan, so
accomplished a tnan-of-letfers lived, with such distinction,
such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusion, such
cheerful and jocund despair 1 Was this Weltschinerz,
which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in
1 100 1 My doubt only lasted till I came upon a literal
tra?islatio/i of the Rubdiydt, and I saw that not the least
remarkable quality of FitzGerald^s poem was its fidelity to
the origifial.
In short, Omar was a FitzGerald before the latter, or
Fitz Gerald was a reincarnation of Omar. It is not to the
disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so closely in
the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius
PROEM
had appeared in the world ; had sung a so?ig of incomparable
beauty and power in an e?iviro?iment no longer ivorthy of
hifn, i?i a language of ?iarrow range ; for many generations
the song was virtually lost ; then by a miracle of creation, a
poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first, was bor?i, who
took up the forgotten poem and sang it anew with all its
original melody and force, and all the accumulated refine-
ment of ages of art. It seejns to me idle to ask whicJi was
the greater master ; each seems greater than his work.
The song is like an instrument oj precious workmanship
and tnarvelous tone, which is tvorthless in common hands,
but 7C'hen it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the
supreme inaster, it yields a melody of transcendant enchant-
ment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the
sphere of influence of the two poets, there is no longer any
comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province;
FitzGerald to the 7vorld. Wherever the English speech is
spoken or read, the Rubdiydt have taken their place as a
classic. 7 'here is not a hill-post in India, 7ior a village in
England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar
Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union. /;/
America he has an equal following, in many regions and
conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts forin an
esoteric sect ; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr.
Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it
exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains
PROEM
one of the most thoroughly read books in every dub library.
I heard them quoted once in one of the most lonely and
desolate spots of the high Rockies. We had been catnping
on the Great Divide, our " roof of the 7i.'orld,'" where in the
space of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its
7vaters to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib
summer. One morning at simrise, as we were breaking
camp, 1 7vas startled to hear one of our party, a frontiers-
man born, intoning these ivords of sombre majesty : —
" ' Tis but a Tent where takes Ms one day's rest
A Sttltdn to the realm of Death addrest ;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrdsh
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.''''
I thought that sublime setting of pri7?ieval forest and
pouring canon was worthy of the lines ; I am S7ire the
dewless, crystalline air ?iever vibrated to strains of more
solemn music. Certainly, our poet can never be numbered
among the great popular writers of all time. He has told
no story ; he has never unpacked his heart iji public ; he has
never thrown the reins on the neck of the winged horse, and
let his i^nagination carry him where it listed. '■'■Ah I the
croivd must have emphatic warrant,'" as Browning sang.
Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose
eye no glitter can dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot
but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle
PROEM
smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited
number 7vho, like Lucretius and Epicurus — without rage
or defiance, even ^inthout unbecoming mirth, — look deep into
the tangled mysteries of things ; refuse credence to the absurd,
atid allegiance to arrogant authority ; sufficietitly conscious
of fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions ; with a faith too
wide for doctrine and a benevolence untrammeled by creed ;
too wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely poets to be
implacably wise.
FOREWORD
The Clay that I am made of once was Man,
Who dying, and resolved mto the same
Obliterated Earth from which he came
Was for the Potter dug, and chased in turn
Through long Vicissitude of Bowl and Urn :
But howsoever moulded, still the Pain
Of that first mortal Anguish would retain,
And cast, and re-cast, for a Thousand years
Would turn the sweetest Water into Tears.
THE BIRD PARLIAMENT.
FOREWORD
S originally printed An Aftermath was
the iirst of two papers contributed to
Blackwood's Magazine^ for November,
1889, and March, 1891, which, "a
good deal extended," were reissued in 1895, under
the title of Tzuo Suffolk Friends ^ From the brief
Preface to the revised work, now out of print, it is
clear that Groome rightly estimated the relative
value and importance of his material : " these two
papers, I think, will be welcome to many in East
Anglia who knew my father, and to more, the
world over, who know FitzGerald's letters and
translations."^
> Two SuFl'OLK Friends. By Francis Hiiides Groome. Wil-
liam Blackwood and Sons. Edinburgh and London, mdcccxcv.
Quarto. Pp. xii+133. [A Suffolk Parson, pp. 1-64; Edward
FitzGerald: An Aftermath, pp. 65-133.]
» With all due allowance for the interesting details of old Suffolk
life preserved in the article on Robert Ilindes Groome it docs not
FORE WORD
The nature and extent of this delightful causerie
was also set forth in an early paragraph : ' ' from
my own recollections 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 I paid to
Woodbridge in the summer of 1889, ^^*^ from
reminiscences and unpublished letters furnished by
friends of FitzGerald, I purpose to weave a patch-
work article which shall in some ways supplement
Mr. Aldis Wright's edition of his Letters."
Henceforth it is unlikely that anything more will
be added to our knowledge of the master of Little
Grange. 3 His life, absolutely devoid of romantic
as a whole demand reprinting. In " The Only Darter" and " Master
Charley" there is "the true pathos and sublime" which set them
apart, and place their author beside such acknowledged masters as
Richard Jefferies and Dr. Jessopp.
3 " His love of music was one of his earliest passions, and remained
with him to the last. I cannot refrain from quoting some recollec-
tions of the late Archdeacon Groome, a friend of his College days,
and so near a neighbour in later life that few letters passed between
them. ' He was a true musician ; not that he was a great performer
on any instrument, but that he so truly appreciated all that was good
and beautiful in music. He was a good performer on the piano, and
could get such full harmonies out of the organ that stood in one
corner of his entrance room at Little Grange as did good to the
listener. Sometimes it would be a bit from one of Mozart's Masses,
FORE WORD
happenings, can serve no valid attempt at " making
copy" which will throw new light on such harmless
far-niente existence. Call him if you must, "an
eccentric man of genius who took more pains to
or from one of the finales of some one of his or Beethoven's Operas.
And then at times he would fill up the harmonies with his voice,
true and resonant almost to the last. I have heard him say, " Did
you never observe how an Italian organ-grinder will sometimes put
in a few notes of his own in such perfect keeping with the air which
he was grinding.'" He was not a great, but he was a good com-
poser. Some of his songs have been printed, and many still remain
in manuscript. Then what pleasant talk I have had with him about
the singers of our early years ; never forgetting to speak of Mrs.
Frere of Downing, as the most perfect private singer we had ever
heard. And so indeed she was. Who that had ever heard her sing
Handel's songs can ever forget the purity of her phrasing and the
pathos of her voice ? She had no particle of vanity in her, and yet
she would say, " Of course, I can sing Handel. I was a pupil of John
Sail, and he was a pupil of Handel." To her old age she still
retained the charm of musical expression, though her voice was but
a thread. And so we spoke of her; two old men with all the enthu-
siastic admiration of fifty years ago. Pleasant was it also to hear
him speak of the public singers of those early days. Braham, so
great, spite of his vulgarity ; Miss Stephens, so sweet to listen to,
though she had no voice of power; and poor Vaughan, who had so
feeble a voice, and yet was always called " such a chaste singer."
How he would roar with laughter, when I would imitate Vaughan
singing
" His hkldeus {sic) love provokes my rage,
Weak as I am, I must engage,"
from Acis and Galatea. Then too his reminiscences of the said
Acis and Galatea as given at the Concerts for Ancient Music. "I
FORE WORD
avoid fame than others do to seek it"; add that
he had a very genuine horror of self-laudation ;
then fancy what a systematic biography would
mean to him ! Whatever might be urged in Thack-
eray's case, we shall do well to rest content with
can see them now, the dear old creeters with the gold eye-glasses and
their turbans, noddling their heads as they sang
O tlie pleasures of the plains ! "
' These old creeters being, as he said, the sopranos who had sung
first as girls, when George the Third was king.
' He was a great lover of our old English composers, specially of
Shield. Handel, he said, has a scroll in his marble hand in the
Abbey on which are written the first bars of
" I know that my Redeemer liveth ; "
and Shield should hold a like scroll, only on it should be written the
first bars of
"A flaxen-headed ploughboy."
' He was fond of telling a story of Handel, which I, at least, have
never seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his
"Samson," in which there is that most touching of all songs, spe-
cially to any one whose powers of sight are waning — "Total
Eclipse." Mr. Beard was the great tenor singer of the day, who
was to sing this song. Handel sent for him. "Mr. Beard," he said,
" I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can tell you how it
ought to be sung." And then he sang it, with what strange pathos
need not be told. Beard stood listening, and when it was finished
said, with tears in his eyes, " But Mr. Handel, I can never sing it like
that." And so he would tell the story with tears in his voice, such
as those best remember, who ever heard him read some piece of his
dear old Crabbe, and break down in the reading.' " — See W. Aldis
Wright's Preface to ' Letters,' Vol. i: x-xii, (1889).
FORE WORD
FitzGerald's letters supplemented, currentc calatiio,
by Groome's friendly half-length "Kit-Kat."''
On the other hand "The Tarno Rye" himself
possessed what seems so strangely absent in his
world-renowned subject ; here a very remarkable
human document may yet be given us, revealing,
as may be inferred from Mr. Watts-Dunton's
appreciation a rare personality known only to the
elect few.
A few words concerning our illustrations, col-
lected at the writer's request by Mr. John Loders
may not be considered out of place, forming as they
do an interesting series and the one thing requisite
to render An Aftermath of permanent acceptability
to all lovers of FitzGerald " the world over." The
4 " The life of FitzGerald is written in his letters, and no memoir
of such a man, whether 'dapper' in his own delightful style, or the
perfunctory effusion of the official biographer, can be other than
unwelcome to those who really understand his character. Since
this was written, Mr. Glyde's ' Memoir of FitzGerald' has made its
appearance. Though drawn up with the best intentions, it has not
induced me to alter the opinion which I have expressed." — See
Col. Prideaux's 'Notes for a Bibliography of Edward FitzGerald'
(London, 1901) p. 72.
5 To whom FitzGerald pleasantly refers in a letter to W. Aldis
Wright under date of May, i<S83: "I shall try for Robert Groome
to meet him," (Charles Keene,) " and Loder is a Rock of Ages to
rely on." — 'More Letters,' p. 283 (1901).
FORE WORD
portrait of Mary Frances FitzGerald^ reproduced
from the rare mezzotint, is in itself a reproduction
in black and white of the original painting by Sir
Thomas Lawrence, and so far as we are aware
has never before been made public. The alleged
resemblance between mother and son is here seen
to have a foundation in fact. Groome's photograph
is delightfull}^ characteristic of the Scholar Gipsy ;
the unconcern of the man, his lack of pose, make
a mere snap-shot unique in its way : the equally
6 " My sister Lusia's Widower has sent me a drawing by Sir T.
Lawrence of my Mother: bearing a surprising resemblance to — The
Duke of Wellington. This was done in her earlier days — I suppose
not long after I was born — for her, and his (Lawrence's) friend Mrs.
Wolff : and though I think too Wellingtonian, the only true likeness
of her. Engravings were made of it — so good as to be facsimiles, I
think — to be given away to Friends. 'Letters to Fanny Kemble.'
P. 177. March 26, 1880. Earlier (Feb. 27, 1872) he had written her.
" She was a remarkable woman, as you said in a former letter, and
as I constantly believe in o\itward Beauty — as an Inde.x of a Beau-
tiful Soul within, I used sometimes to wonder which feature in her
fine face betrayed what was not so good in her Character. I think
(as usual) the Lips: there was a trait of Mischief about them now
and then, like that in — the Tail of a Cat I — otherwise so smooth
and amiable."
" I remember her very well more than sixty years ago ! She
used to drive up to my father's in her carriage with four superb
black horses. . . . She was very partial to my father and a good
customer as well. She was rather a short woman, — you would
hardly think that from the portrait, — but used to sit very highly
cushioned in her carriage and thus make the most of herself." — J. L.
FORE WORD
excellent likeness of his dog, who bears him faith-
ful company, must go down in canine portraiture
along with Rab and Geist and the other immortal
dogs of literary masters.
An unpublished letter, reproduced in facsimile,
was written to one Ablett Pasifull, an old seafaring
man still living. Even the book-plate, "done by
Thackeray one day in Coram Street in 1842,"
in which the likeness is supposed to be that of
Mrs. Brookfield, "all wrong on her feet, so he
said," finds its appropriate place inside our covers.
Taken as a whole we have aimed to present a little
picture-cycle from birthplace through the scenes of
daily life down to the last scene of all — Boulge
churchyard with its profound inscription — "// is
He that hath made us, and not ive ourselves.''''
It was at Bredfield ' Hall ' or ' House,' the terms
seem interchangeable, that FitzGerald was born,
where from upper windows as a child he saw the
masts of ships at sea in Hollesley Bay. Contri-
butions of collateral interest have been included
in this reissue of An Aftermath as for example,
FitzGerald's minor poems, which are surely in
keeping with the field-paths and green lanes of
FORE WORD
Woodbridge and vicinity. The notes on Lamb
are also well to reprint; — while not to have given
Archdeacon Groome's The Only Darter ^ and
'^'^ Master Charley " which constitute his surest pass-
port to the love and gratitude of every reader into
whose hands they may come, would have been a
lamentable omission. Both stories belong to our
readers. The first and best known was reprinted
as will be seen by Mr. John Loder (may he out-
live us all !) for FitzGerald ; the second is fully its
equal : together they are examples of that exquisite
knowledge and charity which is no other than
Love Divine made manifest in the man who could
write them down, and the poor Suffolk yeomen
whose experiences they narrate. That E. F. G.
7 In a letter to W. Aldis Wright dated June ii, 187S, FitzGerald
referring to Carlyle and his niece goes on to say : " I sent them
Groome's ' Only Darter' which I think so good that I shall get him
to let me print it for others besides those of the Ipswich Journal: it
seems to me a beautiful Suffolk ' Idyll ' (why not EidyW ? ) and so
it seemed to those at Chelsea."
A few weeks later (July 2) to C. E. Norton we read: " I had sent
him (Carlyle) the enclosed paper, written by a Suffolk Archdeacon
for his Son's East Anglian Notes and Queries : and now reprinted)
with his permission, by me, for the benefit of others, yourself among
the number. ... If I were in America, at your home, I would recite
it to you; nay, were the Telephone prepared across the Atlantic!"
' Letters,' Vol. ri, pp. 252, 253 (1S94).
FORE WORD
loved such work deepens our love for him. Finally,
by the inclusion of Mr. Edward Clodd's rare little
brochure, of vvhicli only fifty copies were struck
off for private circulation, we bring to an end our
volume of Memorabilia.
Having thus made clear the scope and purpose of
these interesting and mutually related fcrsonalia
we would fain close with a few words upon Edward
FitzGerald and three others who were very dear
to him : William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas
Carlyle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It was no dying
flame upon the altar of Truth and Beauty, one and
indivisible, that these men kindled, soon lit and
soon blown out. Though "they are all gone into
the world of light," they have left behind them a
glory and a gleam not quenched in dust. Still do
they voice in language of essential unity,
"The kind wise word that falls from years that fall —
Hope thou not much and fear thou not at all."
It is true the old order changes slowly. Wood-
bridge retains its immemorial quiet as in the days
when FitzGerald paced its ancient thoroughfares,
and as of yore " the Deben winds away in full tide
FORE WORD
to the sea." Be not forgetful of him, little town !
In his secret heart he loved your fast-fading
Old-world quaintnesses : you gave him of your
serenity, and he accepted it. To us, who come on
pilgrimage and presently depart, grant the like
blessedness of unhaste, "when lights are low and
tides are out," that once was his, who now has
deeper, elemental peace :
"The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm."
THE TARNO RYE
THE TARNO RYE
(FRANCIS IIINDES GROOME)
■^ HAVE been invited by the editor of the
Atheficcum to write a few words about my
late friend and colleague Francis Hindes
Groome, who died on January 24th, 1902,
and was buried among his forefathers at Monk Soham in
Suffolk. I find the task extremely difficult. Though he
died at fifty, he, with the single exception of Borrow, had
lived more than any other friend of mine, and perhaps
suffered more. Indeed, his was one of the most remark-
able and romantic literary lives that, since Sorrow's, have
been lived in my time.
The son of an Archdeacon of Suffolk, he was born on
August 30th, 185 1, at Monk Soham Rectory, where, I
believe, his father and his grandfather were born, and
where they certainly lived; for — as has been recorded
in one of the invaluable registry books of my friend Mr.
F, A. Crisp — he belonged to one of the oldest and most
THE TARNO RYE
distinguished families in Suffolk. He was sent early to
Ipswich School, where he was a very popular boy, but
never strong and never fond of athletic exercises. His
early taste for literature is shown by the fact that with
his boy friend Henry Elliot Maiden he originated a school
magazine called the Elizabetha7i. Like many an organ
originated in the outer world, the Elizabdhaji failed
because it would not, or could not, bring itself into har-
mony with the public taste. The boys wanted news of
cricket and other games : Groome and his assistant editor
gave them literature as far as it was in their power to do
so. The Ipswich School was a very good one for those
who got into the sixth, as Groome did. The head master,
Dr. Holden, was a very fine scholar ; and it is no wonder
that Groome throughout his life showed a considerable
knowledge of and interest in classical literature. That
he had a real insight into the structure of Latin verse is
seen by a rendering of Tennyson's 'Tithonus,' which Mr.
Maiden has been so very good as to show me — a render-
ing for which he got a prize. In 1869 he got prizes for
classical literature, Latin prose, Latin elegiacs, and Latin
hexameters. But if Dr. Holden exercised much influence
over Groome's taste, the assistant master, Mr. Sanderson,
certainly exercised more, for Mr. Sanderson was an
enthusiastic student of Romany. The influence of the
assistant master was soon seen after Groome went up to
THE TAR NO RYE
Oxford. He was ploughed for his " Smalls," and, remain-
ing up for part of the "Long," he went one night to a
fair at Oxford at which many gipsies were present — an
incident which forms an important part of his gipsy story
' Kriegspiel.' Groome at once struck up an acquaintance
with the gipsies at the fair. It occurred also that Mr.
Sanderson, after Groome had left Ipswich School, used
to go and stay at Monk Sohani Rectory every summer for
fishing; and this tended to focus Groome's interest in
Romany matters. At Gottingen, where he afterwards
went, he found himself in a kind of Romany atmosphere,
for, owing perhaps to Benfey's having been a Gottingen
man, Romany matters were still somewhat rife there in
certain sets.
The period from his leaving Gottingen to his appear-
ance in Edinburgh in 1876 as a working literary man of
amazing activity, intelligence, and knowledge is the period
that he spent among the gipsies. And it is this very
period of wild adventure and romance that it is impossible
for me to dwell upon here. But on some future occasion
I hope to write something about his adventures as a
Romany Rye, His first work was on the 'Globe Encyclo-
paedia,' edited by Dr. John Ross. Even at that time he
was very delicate and subject to long wearisome periods of
illness. During his work on the ' Globe ' he fell seriously
ill in the middle of the letter .S". Things were going very
THE TAR NO EYE
badly with him ; but they would have gone much worse
had it not been for the affection and generosity of his
friend and colleague Prof. H. A. Webster, who, in order
to get the work out in time, sat up night after night in
Groome's room, writing articles on Sterne, Voltaire, and
other subjects. Webster's kindness, and afterwards the
kindness of Dr. Patrick, endeared Edinburgh and Scotland
to the "Tarno Rye." As Webster was at that time on the
staff of the ' Encyclopaedia Brittanica,' I think, but I do not
know, that it was through him that Groome got the com-
mission to write his article ' Gypsies ' in that stupendous
work. I do not know whether it is the most important,
but I do know that it is one of the most thorough and
conscientious articles in the entire encyclopaedia. This
was followed by his being engaged by Messrs. Jack to
edit the 'Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland,' a splendid
work, which on its completion was made the subject of a
long and elaborate article in t\\e Aihenceum — an article
which was a great means of directing attention to him,
as he always declared. Anyhow, people now began to
inquire about Groome. In 1880 he brought out 'In Gypsy
Tents,' which I shall describe further on. In 1885 he was
chosen to join the staff of Messrs. W. & R. Chambers.
It is curious to think of the "Tarno Rye," perhaps the
most variously equipped literar}^ man in Europe, after such
adventures as his, sitting from ten to four every day on
THE TARNO RYE
the sub-editorial stool. He was perfectly content on that
stool, however, owing to the genial kindness of his col-
league. As sub-editor under Dr. Patrick, and also as a
very copious contributor, he took part in the preparation
of the new edition of 'Chambers's Encyclopcedia.' He
took a large part also in preparing ' Chambers's Gazetteer '
and 'Chambers's Biographical Dictionary.' Meanwhile
he was writing articles in the 'Dictionary of National
Biography,' articles in Blackwood^ s Magazine and the
Bookman, and also reviews upon special subjects in the
Athenaum.
This was followed in 1887 by a short Border history,
crammed with knowledge. In 1895 his name became
really familiar to the general reader by his delightful little
volume ' Two Suffolk Friends' — sketches of his father and
his father's friend Edward FitzGerald — full of humour
and admirable character-drawing.
In 1896 he published his Romany novel 'Kriegspiel,'
which did not meet with anything like the success it
deserved, although I must say he was himself in some
degree answerable for its comparative failure. The origin
of the story was this. Shortly after our intimacy I told
him that I had written a gipsy story dealing with the East
Anglian gipsies and the Welsh gipsies, but that it had
been so dinned into me by Borrow that in England there
was no interest in the gipsies that I had never found heart
THE TAR NO RYE
to publish it. Groome urged me to let him read it, and
he did read it, as far as it was then complete, and took
an extremely kind view of it, and urged me to bring it
out. But now came another and a new cause for delay in
my bringing out 'Aylwin': Groome himself, who at that
time knew more about Romany matters than all other
Romany students of my acquaintance put together, showed
a remarkable gift as a raconteur, and I felt quite sure that
he could, if he set to work, write a Romany story — the
Romany story of the English language. He strongly
resisted the idea for a long time — for two or three years
at least — and he was only persuaded to undertake the
task at last by my telling him that I would never bring
out my story until he brought out one himself. At last he
yielded, told me of a plot, a capital one, and set to work
upon it. When it was finished he sent the manuscript to
me, and I read it through with the greatest interest, and
also the greatest care, I found, as I expected to find,
that the gipsy chapters were simply perfect, and that it
was altogether an extremely clever romance ; but I felt
also that Groome had given no attention whatever to the
structure of a story. Incidents of the most striking and
original kind were introduced at the wrong places, and this
made them interesting no longer. So persuaded was I
that the story only needed recasting to prove a real success
that I devoted days, and even weeks, to going through
THE TAR NO RYE
the novel, and indicating where the transpositions should
take place, Groome, however, had got so entirely sick
of his novel before he had completed it that he refused
absolutely to put another hour's work into it; for, as he
said, "the writing of it had already been a loss to the
pantry." He sent it, as it was, to an eminent firm of
publishers, who, knowing Groome and his abilities, would
have willingly taken it if they had seen their way to do
so. But they could not, for the very reasons that had
induced me to recast it, and they declined it. The book
was then sent round to publisher after publisher with the
same result ; and yet there was more fine substance in
this novel than in five ordinary stories. It was at last
through the good offices of Mr. Coulson Kernahan that
it was eventually taken by Messrs. Ward & Lock ; and,
although it won warm eulogies from such great writers as
George Meredith, it never made its way. Its failure
distressed me far more than it distressed Groome, for I
loved the man, and knew what its success would have
been to him. Amiable and charming as Groome was, there
was in him a singular vein of dogged obstinacy after he
had formed an opinion ; and he not only refused to recast
his story, but refused to abandon the absurd name of
' Kriegspiel ' for a volume of romantic gipsy adventure.
I suspect that a large proportion of people who asked for
* Kriegspiel ' at Mudie's and Smith's consisted of officers
THE TAR NO RYE
who thought that it was a book on the German war game.
I tried to persuade him to begin another gipsy novel,
but found it quite impossible to do so. But even then I
waited before bringing out my own prose story. I pub-
lished instead my poem in which was told the story of
Rhona Boswell, which, to my own surprise and Groome's,
had a success, notwithstanding its gipsy subject. Then
I brought out my gipsy story, and accepted its success
rather ungratefully, remembering how the greatest gipsy
scholar in the world had failed in this line. In 1899 he
published ' Gypsy Folk-Tales,' in which he got the aid of
the first Romany scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson.
And this was followed in 1 901 by his edition of ' Lavengro,'
which, notwithstanding certain unnecessary carpings at
Borrow — such, for instance, as the assertion that the word
"dock" is never used in Anglo-Romany for "ghost" —
is beyond any doubt the best edition of the book ever
published. The introduction gives sketches of all the
Romany Ryes and students of Romany, from Andrew
Boorde {c. 1490-15 49) down to Mr. G. R. Sims and Mr.
David MacRitchie. During this time it was becoming
painfully perceptible to me that his physical powers were
waning, although for two years that decadence seemed to
have no effect upon his mental powers. But at last, while
he was working on a book in which he took the deepest
interest — the new edition of 'Chambers's Cyclopedia of
THE TAR NO RYE
English Literature ' — it became manifest that the general
physical depression was sapping the forces of the brain.
But it is personal reminiscences of Groome that I have
been invited to write, and I have not yet even begun
upon these. Our close friendship dated no further back
than 1881 — the year in which died the great "Romany
Rye." Indeed, it was owing to Borrow's death, coupled
with Groome's interest in that same Romany girl Sinfi
Lovell, whom the eloquent Romany preacher "Gipsy
Smith " has lately been expatiating upon to immense
audiences, that I first became acquainted with Groome.
Although he has himself in some magazine told the story,
it seems necessary for me to retell it here, for I know of
no better way of giving the readers of the Athenccum a
picture of Frank Groome as he lives in my mind.
It was in 1881 that Borrow, who some seven years
before went down to Oulton, as he told me, " to die,"
achieved death. And it devolved upon me as the chief
friend of his latest years to write an obituary notice of
him in the Athemeinn. Among the many interesting
letters that it brought me from strangers was one from
Groome, whose name was familiar to me as the author of
the article 'Gypsies' in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.'
But besides this I had read ' In Gypsy Tents,' a picture
of the very kind of gipsies I knew myself, those of East
Anglia — a picture whose photographic truth had quite
THE TAR NO RYE
startled me. Howsoever much of matter of fact may be
worked into ' Lavengro ' (and to no one did Borrow talk
with so little reticence upon this delicate subject as to me
during many a stroll about Wimbledon Common and
Richmond Park), I am certain that his first-hand knowl-
edge of gipsy life was quite superficial compared with
Groome's during the nine years or so that he was brought
into contact with them in Great Britain and on the
Continent. Hence a book like ' In Gypsy Tents ' has
for a student of Romany subjects an interest altogether
different from that which Sorrow's books command ; for
while Borrow, the man of genius, throws by the very
necessities of his temperament the colours of romance
around his gipsies, the characters of ' In Gypsy Tents,'
depicted by a man of remarkable talent merely, are as
realistic as though painted by Zola, while the wealth of
gipsy lore at his command is simply overwhelming. At
that time — with the exception of Borrow and the late Sir
Richard Burton, — the only man of letters with whom I
had been brought into contact who knew anything about
the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of Romany life
in an anonymous story called ' Gypsy Experiences,' which
appeared in the Illustrated London Neius in 1851, and in
his play ' Sir Roger de Coverley,' is not only fascinating,
but on the whole true. By-the-by, this charming play
might be revived now that there is a revived interest in
THE TAR NO RYE
n
Romany matters. Mr. George Meredith's wonderful
' Kiomi ' was a picture, I think, of the only Romany chi
he knew ; but genius such as his needs little straw for
the making of bricks. The letter I received from
Groonie enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from a
forgotten anonymous At/ien<eum article of mine, written
as far back as 1877, in which I showed acquaintance
with gipsydom and described the ascent of Snowdon in
the company of Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards
removed bodily to ' Aylwin.' Here is the cutting : —
"We had a striking instance of this some years ago,
when crossing Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning,
with a friend. She was not what is technically called a
lady, yet she was both tall and, in her way, handsome,
and was far more clever than many of those who might
look down upon her ; for her speculative and her practical
abilities were equally remarkable : besides being the first
palmist of her time, she had the reputation of being able
to make more clothes-pegs in an hour, and sell more,
than any other woman in England. The splendour of
that ' Snowdon sunrise ' was such as we can say, from
much experience, can only be seen about once in a life-
time, and could never be given by any pen or pencil.
' You don't seem to enjoy it a bit,' was the irritated
remark we could not help making to our friend, who
stood finite silent and apjiarcntly deaf to tiie raplisodies
H
THE TAR NO RYE
in which we had been indulging, as we both stood looking
at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy
vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and
sometimes blazed, shaking, whenever the sun struck one
and then another, from amethyst to vermilion, ' shot '
now and then with gold. ' Don't injiy it, don't I ? ' said
she, removing her pipe. ' You injiy talking about it, /
injiy lettin' it soak in.' "
Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the
cutting was not a certain Romany chi whom he named,
and said that he had always wondered who the writer of
that article was, and that now he wondered no longer,
for he knew him to be the writer of the obituary notice of
George Borrow. Interested as I was in his letter, it came
at a moment when the illness of a very dear friend of
mine threw most other things out of my mind, and it was
a good while before I answered it, and told him what I
had to tell about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the
adventure on Snowdon. I got another letter from him,
and this was the beginning of a charming correspond-
ence. After a while I discovered that there were, besides
Romany matters, other points of attraction between us.
Groome was the son of Edward FitzGerald's intimate
friend Robert Hindes Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk.
Now long before the great vogue of Omar Khayyam, and,
of course, long before the institution of the Omar
THE TAR NO RYE
15
Khayyam Club, there was a little group of Omarians of
which I was a member. I need not say here who were
the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded in
the ' Toast to Omar Khayyam,' which years afterwards I
printed in the Aihenieiim and have since reprinted in a
volume of mine.
After a while it was arranged that he was to come and
visit us for a few days at The Pines. When it got wind
in the little household here that another Romany Rye, a
successor to George Borrow, was to visit us, and when it
further became known that he had travelled with Hun-
garian gipsies, Roumanian gipsies, Roumelian gipsies,
&c., I don't know what kind of wild and dishevelled
visitor was not expected. Instead of such a guest there
appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young gentle-
men who had ever presented themselves at the door.
No one could possibly have dared to associate Bohemia
with him. As a friend remarked who was afterwards
invited to meet him at luncheon, " Clergyman's son —
suckling for the Church, was stamped upon him from
head to foot." I will not deny that so respectable a
looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at
first. At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing
to his slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his
lithe movements and elastic walk, he seemed to be
several years younger.
i6
THE TAR NO RYE
The subject of Welsh gipsies, and especially of the
Romany chi of Snowdon, made us intimate friends in half
an hour, and then there were East Anglia, Omar
Khayyam, and Edward FitzGerald to talk about! — a
delightful new friend for a man who had so lately lost
the only other Romany Rye in the world. Owing to his
youthful appearance, I christened him there and then the
"Tarno Rye" in remembrance of that other "Tarno
Rye," whom Rhona Boswell loved, I soon found that,
great as was the physical contrast between the Tarno
Rye and the original Romany Rye, the mental contrast
was greater still. Both were shy — very shy; but while
Sorrow's shyness seemed to be born of wariness, the
wariness of a man who felt that he was famous and had a
part to play before an inquisitive world, Groome's shyness
arose from a modesty that was unique.
As a philologist merely, to speak of nothing else, his
equipment was ten times that of Borrow, whose tempera-
ment may be called anti-academic, and who really knew
nothing thoroughly. But while Borrow was for ever
displaying his philology, and seemed always far prouder
of it than of his fascinating powers as a writer of roman-
tic adventures, Groome's philological stores, like all his
other intellectual riches, had to be drawn from him by
his interlocutor if they were to be recognised at all.
Whenever Borrow enunciated anything showing, as he
THE TAR NO RYE
17
thought, exceptional philological knowledge or excep-
tional acquaintance with matters Romany, it was his way
always to bring it out with a sort of rustic twinkle of
conscious superiority, which in its way, however, was
very engaging. From Groonie, on the contrary, philolog-
ical lore would drop, when it did come, as unconsciously
as drops of rain that fall. It was the same with his
knowledge of Romany matters, which was so vast. Not
once in all my close intercourse with him did he display
his knowledge of this subject save in answer to some
inquiry. The same thing is to be noticed in * Kriegspiel.'
Romany students alone are able by reading between the
lines to discover how deep is the hidden knowledge of
Romany matters, so full is the story of allusions which
are lost upon the general reader — lost, indeed, upon all
readers except the very few. I have on a former occasion
pointed out one or two of these. For instance, the gipsy
villain of the story, Perun, when telling the tale of his
crime against the father of the hero who married the
Romany chi whom Perun had hoped to marry, makes
allusion thus to the dead woman : "And then about her
as I have named too often to-day." Had Borrow been
alluding to the Romany taboo of the names of the dead,
how differently would he have gone to work! how eager
would he have been to display and explain his knowledge
of this remarkable Romany superstition ! The same
THE TARNO RYE
remark maybe made upon the gipsy heroine's sly allusion
in ' Kriegspiel ' to " Squire Lucas," the Romany equiva-
lent of Baron Munchausen, an allusion which none but a
Romany student would understand.
Before luncheon Groome and I took a walk over the
common, and along the Portsmouth Road, through the
Robin Hood Gate and across Richmond Park, where
Borrow and I and Dr. Hake had so often strolled. I
wondered what the Gryengroes whom Borrow used to
forgather with would have thought of my new friend.
In personal appearance the two Romany Ryes were as
unlike as in every point of character they were unlike.
Borrow's giant frame made him stand conspicuous
wherever he went, Groome's slender, slight body gave an
impression of great agility ; and the walk of the two great
pedestrians was equally contrasted. Borrow's slope over
the ground with the loose, long step of a hound I have,
on a previous occasion, described; Groome's walk was
springy as a gipsy lad's, and as noiseless as a cat's.
Of course, the talk during that walk ran very much upon
Borrow, whom Groome had seen once or twice, but whom
he did not in the least understand. The two men were
antipathetic to each other. It was then that he told me
how he had first been thrown across the gipsies, and it
was then that he began to open up to me his wonderful
record of experiences among them. The talk during that
THE TAR NO RYE
'9
first out of many most delightful strolls ran upon Benfey,
and afterwards upon all kinds of Romany matters. I
remember how warm he waxed upon his pet aversion,
" Smith of Coalville," as he called him, who, he said, for
the purposes of a professional philanthropist, had done
infinite mischief to the gipsies by confounding them with
all the wandering cockney raff from the slums of London.
On my repeating to him what, among other things, the
Romany chi before mentioned said to me during the ascent
of Snowdon from C'apel Curig, that " to make kairengroes
(house-dwellers) of full-blooded Romanies was impossible,
because they were the cuckoos of the human race, who
had no desire to build nests, and were pricked on to move
about from one place to another over the earth," Groome's
tongue became loosened, and he launched out into a
monologue on this subject full of learning and full, as it
seemed to me, of original views upon the Romanies.
As an instance of the cuckoo instincts of the true
Romany, he told me that in North America — for which
land, alas ! so many of our best Romanies even in
Sorrow's time were leaving Oypsy Dell and the grassy
lanes of old England — the gipsies have contracted a
habit, which is growing rather than waning, of migrating
southward in autumn and northward again in spring. He
then launched out upon the subject of the wide dispersion
of iho Romanies not only in Europe — wherr they are
THE TAR NO RYE
found from almost the extreme north to the extreme
south, and from the shores of the Bosphorus to the shores
of the Atlantic Ocean — but also from north to south and
from east to west in Asia, in Africa, from Egypt to the
very south of the Soudan, and in America from Canada
to the River Amazon. And he then went on to show how
intensely migratory they were over all these vast areas.
So absorbing had been the gipsy talk that I am afraid
the waiting luncheon was spoilt. The little luncheon
party was composed of fervent admirers of Sir Walter
Scott — bigoted admirers, I fear, some of our present-day
critics would have dubbed us ; and it chanced that we all
agreed in pronouncing 'Guy Mannering' to be the most
fascinating of all the Wizard's work. Of course Meg
Merrilies became at once the centre of the talk. One
contended that, great as Meg was as a woman, she was as
a gipsy a failure ; in short, that Scott's idea of the Scottish
gipsy woman was conventional — a fancy portrait in which
are depicted some of the loftiest characteristics of the
Highland woman rather than of the Scottish gipsy. The
true Romany chi can be quite as noble as Meg Merrilies,
said one, but great in a different way. From Meg Merri-
lies the talk naturally turned upon Jane Gordon of Kirk
Yetholm, Meg's prototype, who, when an old woman, was
ducked to death in the River Eden at Carlisle. Then
came the subject of Kirk Yetholm itself, the famous
THE TARNO RYE
headquarters of the Scotch Romanies ; and after this it
naturally turned to Kirk Yetholm's most famous inhabit-
ant, old Will Faas, the gipsy king, whose corpse was
escorted to Yetholm by three hundred and more donkeys.
And upon all these subjects Groome's knowledge was like
an inexhaustible fountain ; or rather it was like a tap,
ready to supply any amount of lore when called upon to
do so.
But it was not merely upon Romany subjects that
Groome found points of sympathy at The Pines during
that first luncheon ; there was that other subject before
mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyam. We,
a handful of Omarians of those antediluvian days, were
perhaps all the more intense in our cult because we
believed it to be esoteric. And here was a guest who
had been brought into actual personal contact with the
wonderful old Fitz. As a child of eight he had seen
him — talked with him — been patted on the head by him.
Groome's father, the Archdeacon of Suffolk, was one of
FitzGerald's most intimate friends. This was at once a
delightful and a powerful link between Frank Groome
and those at the luncheon table ; and when he heard, as
he soon did, the toast to " Omar Khayyam," none drank
that toast with more gusto than he. The fact is, as the
Romanies say, that true friendship, like true love, is apt
to begin at first sight. But I must stop. Frequently
THE TARNO RYE
when the " Tarno Rye " came to England his headquarters
were at The Pines. Many and delightful were the strolls
he and I had together. One day we went to hear a gipsy
band supposed to be composed of Roumelian gipsies.
After we had listened to several well-executed things
Groome sauntered up to one of the performers and spoke
to him in Roumelian Romany. The man, although he
did not understand Groome, knew that he was speaking
Romany of some kind, and began speaking in Hunga-
rian Romany, and was at once responded to by Groome in
that variety of the Romany tongue. Groome then turned
to another of the performers, and was answered in English
Romany. At last he found one, and one only, in the band
who was a Roumelian gipsy, and a conversation between
them at once began.
This incident affords an illustration of the width as well
as the thoroughness of Groome's knowledge of Romany
matters. I have affirmed in 'Aylwin ' that Sinfi Lovell —
a born linguist who could neither read nor write — was the
only gipsy who knew both English and Welsh Romany.
Groome was one of the few Englishmen who knew the
most interesting of all varieties of the Romany tongue.
But latterly he talked a great deal of the vast knowledge
of the Welsh gipsies, both as to language and folk-lore,
possessed by Mr. John Sampson, University Librarian at
Liverpool, the scholar who did so much to aid Groome
THE TARNO RYE
in his last volume on Romany subjects, called ' Gypsy
Folk-Tales.' It therefore gives me the greatest pleasure
to end these very inadequate words of mine with a
beautiful little poem in Welsh Romany by Mr. Sampson
upon the death of the " Tarno Rye." In a very few years
Welsh Romany will become absolutely extinct, and then
this little gem, so full of the Romany feeling, will be
greatly prized. I wish I could have written the poem
myself, but no man could have written it save Mr.
Sampson : —
STANYAKERfiSKI
Romano raia, prala, jinimangro,
Konyo chumerava to chikat,
Shukar Java mangi, ta mukava
Tut te 'jS kamdom me — kushki rat !
Kamli, savimaski, sas i sarla,
Baro zl sas tut, sar, tamo rom,
Lhatidn i jivimaski patrin,
Ta iTan o purikeno drom.
Boshade i chirikle veshtendi ;
Sanile 'pre tuti chal ta chai ;
Muri, puv ta pani tu kam^sas
Dudyeras o sonako lilai.
Palla 'vena brishin, shil, la baval:
Sa'o dives tu murshkines pirdan :
Ako kino 'vesa, rat avela,
Cheros si te kesa tiro tan.
24
THE TAR NO RYE
Pari o tamlo merimasko pani
Dava tuki miro vast, ta so
Tu kamesas tire kokoreski
Mai kamava — " Te soves misto ! '
Translation
TO FRANCIS HINDES GROOME
Scholar Gypsy, Brother, Student,
Peacefully I kiss thy forehead,
Quietly I depart and leave
Thee whom I loved — " Good night."
Sunny, smiling v^-as the morning ;
A light heart was thine, as, a youth.
Thou didst strike life's trail
And take the ancient road.
The birds sang in the woods,
Man and maid laughed on thee,
The hills, field, and water thou didst love
The golden summer illuminated.
Then come the rain, cold, and wind.
All the day thou hast tramped bravely.
Now thou growest weary, night comes on.
It is time to make thy tent.
Across death's dark stream
I give thee my hand ; and what
Thou wouldst have desired for thyself
I wish thee — mayst thou sleep well.
THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
AN AFTERMATH
Gone into darkness, that full light
Of friendship I past, in sleep, atvay
By night, into the deeper night !
The deeper night ? A clearer day
Tha7i our poor twilight dawn on earth —
If night, what barren toil to be !
What life, so maimed by night, 7vere worth
Our livitig out ? Not mine to me
Remembering all the golden hours
Now silent, and so maiiy dead.
And him the last.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
AN AFTERMATH
Y 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 ^^^ 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
28
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Robinson Groome, " should he ordain if he doesn't ordain
you, my dear ? " ' 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."
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.
1 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 transi-
tory world, do, for the sake of avoiding controversies after my
decease, make this my Will," &c.
AN AFTERMATH
29
My father and I had been spending a few days with
Captain Brooke of UfTord, the possessor of one of the
finest private libraries in England.' From Ufford we
drove on to VVoodbridge, 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 hebdoma-
dal 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
' 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
HtzGerald had bought in Woodbridge and put in a tail -pocket.
3°
ED WA RD FITZ GERA LD
some ways supplement Mr. Aldis Wright's edition of his
Letters.' 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 Khayyam,
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
1 889). 2 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
I Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald. (3 vols.
Macmillan, 18S9; 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 Encyclopaedia; 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 Fitz-
Gerald's Letters to Fanny Kemble in ' Temple Bar' (1895). [These
last have been edited by W. Aldis Wright — 'Letters of Edward
FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble, 1S71-1883.' London, 1895. A final
volume entitled ' More Letters of Edward FitzGerald ' appeared in
1901.]
[2 This article has since then been revised and reissued in ' Critical
Kit-Kats' by Edmund Gosse. London, 1S96.]
AN AFTERMATH
31
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 liave 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 ! Hut
32
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 eccen-
tricities 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 — / know that I am."
And of that same brother he once wrote to my father : —
[» The sum lent to this friend was ^500. j. L.]
AN AFTERMATH
33
Lowestoft: Dec. 2/66.
My dear Groome, — "At least for what I know" (as
old Isaac Clarke used to say), 1 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 Nego-
tiation. 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 / 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,
34
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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.
" K^^ Don't write politics — I agree with you before-
hand," 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
Mary Frances Fitz Gerald
AN AFTERMATH
35
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 186 1,
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 prob-
ably 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 Memo-
36
EDWARD FITZGERALD
riam and The Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived
the 'M.apad(j}voii.6,xovs S.v8pas 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." 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
I This was the hymn — its words, like the music, by my father —
that is printed at the end of this volume.
AN AFTERMATH
37
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 'Rubaiyat' 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 Whefice, like Water willy-nilly flowing ;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
m * m * * * *
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
38
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Round with the Sun-illumin'd 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 " Efifigy" — 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,
AN AFTERMATH
39
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, 1 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.
40
EDWARD FITZGERALD
" ' Row tu me, row 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 «T.) And again when poor Mrs. Burden asks what
is meant by 2i 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 FitzGer-
ald's. For years he was meditating a new edition of
AN AFTERMATH
41
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,'
i868-6g') 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
' Reprinted in Vol. 11, of the American edition of FitzGerald's
Works. ['Works of Edward FitzGerald, Translator of Omar
Khayyam, Reprinted from the original impressions, with some
corrections derived from his own annotated copies. In two volumes :
New York and Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. London : Bernard
Quaritch.' 8vo. 1887.]
42
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 accus-
tomed 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."
AN AFTERMATH
43
"Cards. — Though often carried on board to pass
away the time at All-fours, Don, or Sir-wiser {q.v.), never-
theless 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 Menage'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 to 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 crea-
tures — 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
44
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 Time-piece
that measures the hours of day and night. A Friend's
Watch going wrong of late, I advised Regulating ; but
AN AFTERMATH
45
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.
46
EDWARD FITZGERALD
" I am so delighted at the glory E. F. G. has gained by his trans-
lation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The ' Contemporary
Review ' and the ' Spectator ' newspaper I It is full time that Fitz
should be disintened, 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 Rubaiyat 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 con-
tent 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
AN AFTERMATH
47
examples " ? There was the Sufifolk parson, his con-
temporary, 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 won-
der, of which one catches a premonitory echo in this
extract from a long letter ■ 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
' 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 Tcn7tysoniana to Lord
Tennyson.
48
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 direc-
tions for what is to be done."
FitzGerald 's wide, albeit eclectic reading, is suffi-
ciently 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).
AN AFTERMATH
49
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, 1 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 ")3
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
[I Bought, not 'built' a boat. j. i..]
[2 'Ske^ reached her ninetieth year March i, 1898. j. i,.]
[3 This passage was written in 1889. "The King of Clubs" died
in 1893. J- '••]
so
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 Wood-
bridge 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." " Dissay," ' said John, warily ; "anyhow
he didn't fare to know much about bosses 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 i860
till 1873. The cause of his leaving them is only half
told in Mr. Aldis Wright's edition of the Letters (p. 365,
I Suffolk for " I daresay."
AN AFTERMATH
51
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 — 1 have heard
FitzGerald tell the story — came a timid rap at the door
of his sitting-room, a deep " Now, Berry, be tirm," 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.
I wandered through the grounds of Little Grange,
[ « Berry was not a 'small man,' but about 5 feet S inches and 15
stone weight, j. i..]
52
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 Bred-
field 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 outbuild-
ings. 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."
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
[I All ' the doves ' were pigeons. Tennyson's lines are account-
able for this statement, j. L.]
AN AFTERMATH
53
so much in the Letters, and of whom I have often heard
tell. He went up to the great Exhibition of 185 1 ; 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 red-brick tower.
His grave is marked by a flat granite monument, carved
with a cross-fleury. Pity, it seemed, that no roses grew
over it.'
[' Boulge Hall for some years past has been the property of the
Whites. J. L.]
2 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
54
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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."
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 illustra-
tions to the * Rubaiyat,' 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,
Naishapur, and planted here by my brother-members of the Omar
Khayyam Club on 7th October 1893 (' Concerning a Pilgrimage to
the Grave of Edward FitzGerald.' By Edward Clodd. Privately
printed, 1894).
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AN AFTERMATH
55
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, Fitz-
Gerald'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 " Wel-
come 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: —
56
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 1 5 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 mooi^ed, 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 I 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 : —
« I append throughout the page of the published letters that
comes nearest in date.
AN AFTERMATH
57
"Geldestone Hall, Beccles, Feb. 5, 1862.
[' Letters,' p. 284.]
"... 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 Counte-
nance when he faces such a charge as disarms all one's
wrath."
58
EDWARD FITZGERALD
"ii Marine Terrace, Lowestoft, /«/y 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 i860 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 Morns. And here I shall be till Monday :
then shall probably go with my Brother [Peter] to Dover
AN AFTERMATH
59
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. . . ."
" II 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. [lb.]
"... 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
6o
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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,' unlike Noah's Dove, brings no report of a green
leaf when I ask him about the Grass seed. . . ."
" Lowestoft, April 3, '66. [lb.]
"... Looking over the Tombstones of the old Church-
yard 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, Jtme 30, 1866.
['Letters,' p. 305.]
'" We got here very well on Tuesday evens. 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,
I Mr. Dove was the builder of Little Grange.
AN AFTERMATH
6i
where I should have seen my Friend Mansfield the Ship-
wright. 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 after-
wards 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*^ 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,' 'My poor
' His voice was un forge table. Mr. Mowbray Donne quotes in a
letter this passage from FitzGerald's published Letters: "What
62
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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. [lb.]
"... Mr. Manby is wrong about our getting no com-
pensation for the Damage (so far as it c"^ be seeji) 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,
Capt°- Newson. The Steamer's Captain admitted that
he had expected us to be cracked like a Walnut.
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."
AN AFTERMATH
63
" Now, I want you to tell me of this. You know of
Newson's lending Posh^ 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 1 should not : all Newson meant
(which 1 believe is very true) there are so ma?iy men here,
' 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 boat-
man, with whom Mr. FitzGerald used to sail in Posh's absence.
64
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 ^^ '66. [lb.]
"... 'Posh' went off in his new, old Lugger,' 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 Man-
kind) — has perfect reliance on his Honour, Industry,
Skill, and Luck. This is a pretty Sight to me. I tell
I A second-hand boat that Posh bought at Southwold before the
building of the " Meum and Tuum."
AN AFTERMATH
65
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 (with-
out 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 ! '"
"LovvKSTOFT, Dec. 4, 1866, [lb.]
" 1 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
66
EDWARD FITZGERALD
more of my Element than elsewhere, and the old Lodging
Life suits me best. That, however, I have at Wood-
bridge ; 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. 1 1 ; 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
AN AFTERMATH
67
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 somethings 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.' 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
' 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."
68
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Temperance and Order. This little Lecture I give him —
to go the way, I suppose, of all such Advice, . . ."
"i2 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. . . ."
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AN AFTERMATH
69
" 'Becky's,' Saturday, May 18, '67. [lb.]
"... 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
Ballard'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 ! . . ."
70
EDWARD FITZGERALD
"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 ser-
vices hitherto, I yesterday gave him ;^2o, telling him that
/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 (yester-
day), 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, dead 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.
^^'^u^ A>^vo <^ot^ A^^ ^ ^f^oUC^^
c^^^^ ^<7^ /6t^^ ^ jcpCv^r^X V ^Cv^,^
^ V- —
^O) «ric:^ >, — ; /^ , *v^
r-
<r>y\^
AN AFTERMATH
71
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. [lb.]
"... 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 intro-
duced 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, some-
times 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 anyrate 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^ ' which Posh brings in, or what
his now innumerable friends the Trawlers are always
' An extra large mackerel. — vSee Words and Phrases.
72
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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. [lb.]
"... 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 aj-e we to have rain ? Last night it light-
ened 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 ! ' "
AN AFTERMATH
73
"Lowestoft, Sunday, Aug. 30, '6g.
['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 T 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. . . ."
74
EDWARD FITZGERALD
" Lowestoft, Sept. 4, '69. [lb.]
" I wish you 7tiere 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
AN AFTERMATH
75
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 fAe 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
76
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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. [lb.]
"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. / 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 ;^25o. Some boats have ;!^6oo, 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 homoeo-
pathic Aconite : but I sent off some pills of it to Grimsby
last night. ..."
AN AFTERMATH
77
"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 T 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 ii:ul been
78
EDWARD FITZGERALD
indeed ^a Utile 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
AN AFTERMATH
79
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.' " '
' 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.
8o
EDWARD FITZGERALD
"Lowestoft, Saturday^ Feb. 25, 187 1.
['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 com-
mand of Voice in a Hen reputed so unlucky ' 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
1 Compare the old folk rhyme —
" A whistling woman and a crowing hen
Are hateful alike to God and men."
o
<;
Pi
w
O
AN AFTERMATH
8i
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, /a7i. 9, 1874.
['Letters,' p. 366.]
"... No doubt Berry thinks that his Month's Notice,
which was up last Mondaj', 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 Iwre 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
82
EDWARD FITZGERALD
about the Man : I believe his want of Conscience in some
particulars is to be referred to his Salwaging Ethics ; and
your Cromwells, Caesars, 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, / 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,
AN AFTERMATH
83
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
s'uch 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
84
EDWARD FITZGERALD
like it. I will send you a copy if you please when it is
completed."
" 1 1 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,/<ar«. 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 I, 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
Q
O
O
O
<
O
w
k4
AN AFTERMATH
8S
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 i6, 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 Athenceums), 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. How-
ever, I never cared so much for him as has been the
86
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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 ! voil^ que j'ai dejk dit tout ce que vient au bout
de ma plume. Je ne bouge pas d'ici ; cependant, I'annee
va son train. Toujours k vous et ^ les votres, 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 ^milius 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 : —
AN AFTERMATH
87
A PARAPHRASE BY EDWARD FITZGERALD
OF THE SPEECH OF PAULLUS /EMILIUS 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.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
And for his camp's strength could not forth be forced,
I slipped between his Outposts by the woods
At Petra, thence I foUow'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
RoU'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 \ </
\ y
When nothing seem'd to pray for, yet I pray'd ; ""--'f
That because Fortune, having reach'd her height, /
AN AFTERMATH
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 —
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
1 had engrafted in an alien Stock,
And now, beside himself, no one survives
Of the old House of PauUus."
90
EDWARD FITZGERALD
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
' Rubaiyat.' 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.
iHisevere*
^^^^^ ^m
J. A
cres.
P
" Lord, have utercy."
Lord, who wast content to die.
That poor sinners may draw nigli
To the throne of grace on high.
Miserere, Domine.
2. Who dost hear my every groan,
Intercedest at the throne,
crcs. Making my poor prayers Thine own,
/ Miserere, Domine.
3. Wlien some sorrow, pressing sore,
Tells me, that life nevermore
cres. Can be, as it was of yore,
/ Miserere, Domine.
4. Let me hear the Voice, that said,
" It is I, be not afraid" ;
crcs. So the sorrow shall be stay'd,
p Miserere, Domine.
5. When the hour of death is nigh,
And the watchers, standing by,
cres. Raise the supplicating cry,
/ Miserere, Domine.
6. Take me to Thy promised rest.
Number me among the blest,
/ Poor, and yet a welcomed guest.
f Alleluia, Domine.
MISCELLANIES
IN VERSE AND PROSE
I
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
I
"THE MEADOWS IN SPRING"
T was at Naseby, in the spring of the following year
( 1 831 ), that he made his earliest attempt in verse, the
earliest at any rate which has yet been discovered.
Charles Lamb, writing to Moxon in Augnst, tells
him, ' The Athenaeum has been hoaxed with some
excjuisitc ijoetry, that was, two or three months ago, in Hone's
Book. . . The poem I mean is in Hone's Book as far back as
April. I do not know who wrote it ; but 'tis a poem I envy — that
and Montgomery's " Last Man " : I envy the writers, because I feel
I could have done something like them.' It first appeared in Hone's
Year Book for April 30, 1831, with the title 'The Meadows in
Spring' and the following letter to the Editor. 'These verses are
in the old style ; rather homely in expression ; but I honestly
profess to stick more to the simplicity of the old poets than the
moderns, and to love the philosophical good humour of our old
writers more than the sickly melancholy of the Byronian wits. If
my verses be not good, they are good humoured, and that is some-
thing.' With a few verbal changes they were sent to the Athenreum,
and appeared in that paper on July 9, 1831, accompanied by a note
96
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
of the Editor's, from which it is evident that he supposed them to
have been written by Lamb.
To the Editor of the Athenceum.
Sir,
These verses are something in the old style, but not the worse
for that : not that I mean to call them good : but I am sure they
would not have been better, if dressed up in the newest Montgomery
fashion, for which I cannot say I have much love. If they are fitted
for your paper, you are welcome to them. I send them to you,
because I find only in your paper a love of our old literature, which
is almost monstrous in the eyes of modem ladies and gentlemen.
My verses are certainly not in the present fashion ; but, I must own,
though there may not be the same merit in the thoughts, I think the
style much better: and this with no credit to myself, but to the
merry old writers of more manly times.
Your humble servant,
Epsilon.
'Tis a dull sight
To see the year dying,
When winter winds
Set the yellow wood sighing :
Sighing, oh ! sighing.
When such a time cometh,
I do retire
Into an old room
Beside a bright fire :
Oh, pile a bright fire !
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
97
And there I sit
Reading old things,
Of knights and lorn damsels,
While the wind sings —
Oh, drearily sings !
I never look out
Nor attend to the blast ;
For all to be seen
Is the leaves falling fast :
Falling, falling !
But close at the hearth.
Like a cricket, sit I,
Reading of summer
And chivalry —
Gallant chivalry !
Then with an old friend
I talk of our youth —
How 'twas gladsome, but often
Foolish, forsooth :
But gladsome, gladsome !
Or to get merry
We sing some old rhyme,
Tliat made the wood ring again
98
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
In summer time —
Sweet summer time !
Then go we to smoking,
Silent and snug :
Nought passes between us,
Save a brown jug —
Sometimes !
And sometimes a tear
Will rise in each eye.
Seeing the two old friends
So merrily —
So merrily !
And ere to bed
Go we, go we,
Down on the ashes
We kneel on the knee.
Praying together !
Thus, then, live I,
Till, 'mid all the gloom.
By heaven ! the bold sun
Is with me in the room,
Shining, shining !
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
99
Then the clouds part,
Swallows soaring between ;
The spring is alive,
And the meadows are green !
I jump up, like mad.
Break the old pipe in twain,
And away to the meadows,
The meadows again !
I had very little hesitation, from internal evidence alone, in
identifying these verses with those which FitzGerald had written,
as he said, when a lad, or little more than a lad, and sent to the
Athenaaum, but all question has been set at rest by the discovery of
a copy in a common -place book belonging to the late Archdeacon
Allen, with the heading ' E. F. G.', and the date 'Naseby, Spring,
1 831.' This copy differs slightly from those in the Year Book and
in the Athenaeum, and in place of the tenth stanza it has,
So winter passeth
Like a long sleep
From falling autumn
To primrose-peep."
— Letters and Literary Remaifis (1889), Vol. I, pp. 4-8.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
II
OCCASIONAL VERSES'
Through the kindness of the late Mr. Thomas Allen I was enabled
to recover the missing stanzas about Clora referred to in the Letters
of Edward FitzGerald, i. 19, and with them some other verses by
the same pen, hitherto unknown to me. Of these I printed privately
twenty -five copies in Februaiy 1891. — See Miscellanies by Edward
FitzGerald, edited by William Aldis Wright, (1900).
TO A LADY SINGING
Canst thou, my Clora, declare,
After thy sweet song dieth
Into the wild summer air,
Whither it falleth or flieth ?
Soon would my answer be noted,
Wert thou but sage as sweet throated.
II
Melody, dying away,
Into the dark sky closes,
Like the good soul from her clay
Like the fair odour of roses :
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Therefore thou now art behind it,
But thou shalt follow, and find it.
Ill
Nothing can utterly die ;
Music, aloft upspringing,
Turns to pure atoms of sky
Each golden note of thy singing
And that to which morning did listen
At eve in a Rainbow may glisten.
IV
Beauty, when laid in the grave,
Feedeth the lily beside her.
Therefore the soul cannot have
Station or honour denied her ;
She will not better her essence.
But wear a crown in God's presence.
[ON ANNE ALLEN I]
Thp: wind blew keenly from the Western sea,
And drove the dead leaves slanting from the tree —
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
• vSee Letters, i. 72. She died in the autumn of 1S33, ^'''^ y^ar
after FitzGerald had seen her at Tenby.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Heaping them up before her Father's door
When I saw her whom I shall see no more —
We cannot bribe thee, Death.
II
She went abroad the falling leaves among,
She saw the merry season fade, and sung
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
Freely she wandered in the leafless wood.
And said that all was fresh, and fair, and good,
She knew thee not, O Death.
Ill
She bound her shining hair across her brow,
She went into the garden fading now ;
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
And if one sighed to think that it was sere,
She smiled to think that it would bloom next year
She feared thee not, O Death.
IV
Blooming she came back to the cheerful room
With all the fairer flowers yet in bloom,
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
A fragrant knot for each of us she tied.
And placed the fairest at her Father's side —
She cannot charm thee, Death.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
103
Her pleasant smile spread sunshine upon all ;
We heard her sweet clear laughter in the Hall ;
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
We heard her sometimes after evening prayer,
As she went singing softly up the stair —
No voice can charm thee. Death.
VI
Where is the pleasant smile, the laughter kind.
That made sweet music of the winter wind ?
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith —
Idly they gaze upon her empty place,
Her kiss hath faded from her Father's face ; —
She is with thee, O Death.
[TO A VIOLET]
Fair violet ! sweet saint !
Answer us — Whither art thou gone ?
Ever thou wert so still, and faint,
And fearing to be look'd upon.
We cannot say that one hath died.
Who wont to live so unespied,
I04
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
But crept away unto a stiller spot,
Where men may stir the grass, and find thee not.
J "In Febniary, 1891, Mr. Aldis Wright printed privately twenty -
five copies of some verses by FitzGerald in a leaflet of four pages,
uniform in size writh ' The Letters and Literary Remains.' The
verses, with a short introductory paragraph, were as follows : ' To a
Lady Singing,' ' On Anne Allen,' and ' To a Violet.' The last
two pieces had never been printed before, but the last two stanzas
of the first piece, which were enclosed in a letter to John Allen,
written in December, 1837, were printed in 'Letters and Literary
Remains,' 1. 16, and afterwards in 'Letters,' i. 19, to which were
added in a note the first two stanzas, which Mr. Aldis Wright had
been enabled to recover through the kindness of Mr. Thomas Allen.
The 'Occasional Verses' were published in 'Miscellanies,' 1900,
pp. 203-207." — {Notes for a Bibliography of Edward FitzGerald.
By Colonel W. F. Prideaux. London, 1901. Pp. 52, 53.)
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
105
III
r.REDFTET.D HALL
Lo, an English mansion founded
In the elder James's reign,
Quaint and stately, and surrounded
With a pastoral domain.
With well-timber'd lawn and gardens
And with many a pleasant mead,
Skirted by the lofty coverts
Where the hare and pheasant feed.
Flank'd it is with goodly stables,
Shelter'd by coeval trees :
So it lifts its honest gables
Toward the distant German seas ;
Where it once discerned the smoke
Of old sea-battles far away :
Saw victorious Nelson's topmasts
Anchoring in Hollesley Bay.
But whatever storm might riot,
Cannon roar, and trumpet ring,
io6
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Still amid these meadows quiet
Did the yearly violet spring:
Still Heaven's starry hand suspended
That light balance of the dew,
That each night on earth descended,
And each morning rose anew :
And the ancient house stood rearing
Undisturb'd her chimneys high.
And her gilded vanes still veering
Toward each quarter of the sky :
While like wave to wave succeeding
Through the world of joy and strife,
Household after household speeding
Handed on the torch of life :
First, sir Knight in ruff and doublet,
Arm in arm with stately dame ;
Then the Cavaliers indignant
For their monarch brought to shame
Languid beauties limn'd by Lely;
Full-wigg'd Justice of Queen Anne :
Tory squires who tippled freely ;
And the modern Gentleman :
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
107
Here they lived, and here they greeted,
Maids and matrons, sons and sires.
Wandering in its walks, or seated
Round its hospitable fires :
Oft their silken dresses floated
Gleaming through the pleasure ground :
Oft dash'd by the scarlet-coated
Hunter, horse, and dappled hound.
Till the Bell that not in vain
Had summon'd them to weekly prayer,
Call'd them one by one again
To the church — and left them there !
They with all their loves and passions,
Compliment, and song, and jest.
Politics, and sports, and fashions,
Merged in everlasting rest !
So they pass — while thou, old Mansion,
Markest with unalter'd face
How like the foliage of thy summers
Race of man succeeds to race.
To most thou stand'st a record sad,
But all the sunshine of the year
io8
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Could not make thine aspect glad
To one whose youth is buried here.
In thine ancient rooms and gardens
Buried — and his own no more
Than the youth of those old owners,
Dead two centuries before.
Unto him the fields around thee
Darken with the days gone by :
O'er the solemn woods that bound thee
Ancient sunsets seem to die.
Sighs the selfsame breeze of morning
Through the cypress as of old ;
Ever at the Spring's returning
One same crocus breaks the mould.
Still though 'scaping Time's more savage
Handywork this pile appears,
It has not escaped the ravage
Of the undermining years.
And though each succeeding master,
Grumbling at the cost to pay,
Did with coat of paint and plaster
Hide the wrinkles of decay ;
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
109
Yet the secret worm ne'er ceases,
Nor the mouse behind the wall ;
Heart of oak will come to pieces,
And farewell to Bredfield Hall !
"These verses on his old home were written originally by Fitz-
Gerald as early as 1839, and communicated to Bernard Barton.
They were circulated in slightly differing forms among his friends,
and probably never received the final touches of his hand, but they
contain what. Professor Cowell informs me, were in his own judg-
ment the best lines he had ever written, as shewing real imagination,
and it seems better to print them though imperfect. In reply to an
old friend, who had heard some of the lines quoted and supposed
them to be from Tennyson, he wrote : ' I was astonisht to find I
had three sheets to fold up; and now one half "cheer" more, only
to prevent you wasting any more trouble in looking through Tenny-
son for those verses — I myself having been puzzled at first to what
you alluded by that single line. No : / wrote them along with many
others about my old home more than forty years ago, and they recur
to me also as I wander about the Garden or the Lawn. Therefore
I suppose there is some native force about them, though your
referring them to A. T. proves that I was echoing him.' " — Letters
and Literary Remains (1889), Vol. III., pp. 458-461.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
IV
CHRONOMOROS '
In all the actions that a Man performs, some part of his life
passeth. We die with doing that, for which only our sliding life was
granted. Nay, though we do nothing, Time keeps his constant
pace, and flies as fast in idlenesse, as in employment. Whether we
play or labour, or sleep, or dance, or study, THE SUNNE POST-
ETH, AND THE SAND RUNNES.
OWEN FELLTHAM.
Wearied with hearing folks cry,
That Time would incessantly fly,
Said I to myself, "I don't see
Why Time should not wait upon me ;
> " Fulcher's Poetical Miscellany. Published by G. W.
Fulcher, Sudbury, and Suttaby & Co., London [1841]. — 'Chrono-
moros,' signed ' Anon.,' p. 236.
"This little book, of which a copy of the second edition, issued in
May, 1 841, will be found in the British Museum, is made up, with a
few exceptions, according to the preface, of selections from the
seventeen volumes of Fulcher's ' Sudbury Pocket Book,' of which no
example appears to exist in the national collection. I am therefore
unable to say whether the poem of ' Chronomoros,' which has been
reprinted by Mr. Aldis Wright in the ' Letters and Literary Remains
of Edward FitzGerald,' iii. 461, appeared originally in the 'Pocket
Book ' or the ' Miscellany.' "
W. F. PRIDEAUX.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
I will not be carried away,
Whether I like it, or nay : " —
But ere I go on with my strain,
Pray turn me that hour-glass again !
I said, " I will read, and will write,
And labour all day, and all night,
And Time will so heavily load,
That he cannot but wait on the road ; " —
But I found, that, balloon-like in size.
The more fiU'd, the faster he flies ;
And I could not the trial maintain.
Without turning the hour-glass again !
Then said I, " If Time has so flown
When laden, I'll leave him alone;
And I think that he cannot but stay,
When he's nothing to carry away ! "
So I sat, folding my hands,
Watching the mystical sands.
As they fell, grain after grain,
Till I turn'd up the hour-glass again !
Then I cried, in a rage, "Time i-Z/c/// stand 1 "
The hour-glass I smash'd with my hand.
My watch into atoms I broke
And the sun-dial hid with a cloak!
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
" Now," I shouted aloud, " Time is done ! "
When suddenly, down went the Sun ;
And I found to my cost and my pain,
I might buy a new hour-glass again !
Whether we wake, or we sleep,
Whether we carol, or weep,
The Sun, with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time ;
But Time, in a still better trim,
Marketh the going of him :
One link in an infinite chain,
Is this turning the hour-glass again !
The robes of the Day and the Night,
Are not wove of mere darkness and light ;
We read that, at Joshua's will.
The Sun for a Time once stood still !
So that Time by his measure to try,
Is Petitio Principii !
Time's Scythe is going amain,
Though he turn not his hour-glass again !
And yet, after all, what is Time ?
Renowned in Reason, and Rhyme,
A Phantom, a Name, a Notion,
That measures Duration or Motion ?
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
"3
Or but an apt term in the lease
Of Beings, whio know they must cease ?
The hand utters more than the brain,
When turning the hour-glass again !
The King in a carriage may ride,
And the Beggar may crawl at his side ;
But, in the general race,
They are travelling all the same pace,
And houses, and trees, and high-way.
Are in the same gallop as they :
We mark our steps in the train.
When turning the hour-glass again !
People complain, with a sigh.
How terribly Chroniclers lie ;
But there is one pretty right,
Heard in the dead of the night,
Calling aloud to the people.
Out of St Dunstan's Steeple,
Telling them under the vane,
To turn their hour-glasses again !
MORAL
Masters ! we live here for ever.
Like so many iish in a river;
114
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
We may mope, tumble, or glide,
And eat one another beside ;
But, whithersoever we go,
The River will flow, flow, flow !
And now, that I've ended my strain.
Pray turn me that hour-glass again !
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
"5
VIRGIL'S GARDEN'
Laid out a la Delille
" There is more pleasantness in the little platform of a Garden
which he gives us about the middle of this Book" (' Georgick ' IV
1 1 5-148) " than in all the spacious Walks and Waterfalls of Monsieur.
Kapin." — Dryden ; two of whose lines are here marked by inverted
commas.
But that, my destined voyage almost done,
I think to slacken sail and shoreward run,
I would enlarge on that peculiar care
Which makes the Garden bloom, the Orchard bear,
Pampers the Melon into girth, and blows
Twice to one summer the Calabrian Rose :
Nor many a shrub with flower and berries hung.
Nor Myrtle of the seashore^ leave unsung.
1 In a letter to Professor C. E. Norton, dated 9 June, 1882,
FitzGerald wrote : " I will enclose some pretty Verses, some twenty
years old, which I sent to Temple Bar, which repaid me (as I deserved)
with a dozen copies" ("Letters," ii, p. 330). They were printed
in this magazine for April, 1882. H&e Letters and Literary Kcmains,
iii, p. 464-466.
2 Mitford says that it abounds on the coast of Calabria.
ii6
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
" For where the Tower of old Tarentum stands,
And dark Galesus soaks the yellow sands,"
I mind me of an old Corycian swain.
Who from a plot of disregarded plain,
That neither Corn, nor Vine, nor Olive grew.
Yet such a store of garden-produce drew
That made him rich in heart as Kings with all
Their wealth, when he returned at even-fall,
And from the conquest of the barren ground
His table with unpurchased plenty crown'd.
For him the Rose first open'd ; his, somehow.
The first ripe Apple redden'd on the bough ;
Nay, even when melancholy Winter still
Congeal'd the glebe, and check'd the wandering rill,
The sturdy veteran might abroad be seen.
With some first slip of unexpected green.
Upbraiding Nature with her tardy Spring,
And those south winds so late upon the wing.
He sow'd the seed ; and, under Sun and Shower,
Up came the Leaf, and after it the Flower,
From which no busier bees than his derived
More, or more honey for their Master hived :
Under his skilful hand no savage root
But sure to thrive with its adopted shoot ;
No sapling but, transplanted, sure to grow,
Sizable standards set in even row ;
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Some for their annual crop of fruit, and some
For longer service in the years to come ;
While his young Plane already welcome made
The guest who came to drink beneath the shade.
But, by the stern conditions of my song
Compell'd to leave where I would linger long,
To other bards the Garden I resign
Who with more leisure step shall follow mine.
ii8
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
VI
TRANSLATION FROM PETRARCH'
(Se la mia vita dalP aspro tormento)
If it be destined that my Life, from thine
Divided, yet with thine shall linger on
Till, in the later twilight of Decline,
I may behold those Eyes, their lustre gone ;
When the gold tresses that enrich thy brow
Shall all be faded into silver-gray,
From which the wreaths that well bedeck them now
For many a Summer shall have fall'n away :
Then should I dare to whisper in your ears
The pent-up Passion of so long ago,
That Love which hath survived the wreck of years
Hath little else to pray for, or bestow,
Thou wilt not to the broken heart deny
The boon of one too-late relenting Sigh.
I Printed for the first time from MSS. left by FitzGerald to W.
Aldis Wright in Letters and Literary Remains (1889), iii, p. 466.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR PO-EMS
119
VII
ON THE DEATH OF BERNARD BARTON'
Lav him gently in the ground,
The good, the genial, and the wise ;
While Spring blows forward in the skies
To breathe new verdure o'er the mound
Where the kindly Poet lies.
Gently lay him in his jDlace,
While the still Brethren round him stand ;
The soul indeed is far away,
But we would reverence the clay
In which so long she made a stay,
Beaming through the friendly face.
And holding forth the honest hand —
Thou, that didst so often twine
For other urns the funeral song,
» These lines at the end of a brief note on the " Funeral of
Bernard Barton " were first printed in The Ipswich Journal, March 3,
1849. ^^^ Miscellanies (1900), pp. 157, 58.
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
One who has known and lov'd thee long,
Would, ere he mingles with the throng,
Just hang this little wreath on thine.
Farewell, thou spirit kind and true ;
Old Friend, for evermore Adieu !
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
viri
THE TWO GENERALS'
LUCIUS ^MILIUS PAULLUS
His Speech to the Roman People after his Triumph over Perseus, King
of Macedonia, U. C. 585. Livy xlv. 41. (And unfaithfil to the
few and simple words recorded in the Original)
With what success, Quirites, I have served
The Commonwealth, and, in the very hour
Of Glory, what a double Thunderbolt
From Heav'n has struck upon my private roof,
Rome needs not to be told, who lately saw
So close together treading through her streets
My Triumph, and the Funeral of my Sons.
Yet bear with me while, in a few brief words,
And uninvidious spirit, I compare
Beside the fulness of the general Joy
My single Destitution.
When the time
For leaving Italy was come, the Ships
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
With all their Armament, and men complete,
As the Sun rose I left Brundusium :
With all my Ships before that Sun was down
I made Corcyra : thence, within five days
To Delphi : where, Lustration to the God
iMade for myself, the Army, and the Fleet,
In five days more I reach'd the Roman Camp ;
Took the Command ; redress'd what was amiss :
And, for King Perseus would not forth to fight.
And, for his Camp's strength, forth could not be forced,
I slipp'd beside him through the Mountain-pass
To Pydna ; whither when himself forced back.
And fight he must, I fought, I routed him :
And all the War that, swelling for four years,
Consul to Consul handed over worse
Than from his Predecessor he took up.
In fifteen days victoriously I closed.
Nor stay'd my Fortune here. Upon Success
Success came rolling : with their Army lost,
The Macedonian Cities all gave in ;
Into my hands the Royal Treasure then —
And, by and by, the King's self and his Sons,
As by the very finger of the Gods
Betray'd, whose Temple they had fled to — fell.
And now my swollen Fortune to myself
Became suspicious : I began to dread
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
123
The seas that were to carry such a freight
Of Conquest, and of Conquerors. IJut when
With all-propitious Wind and Wave we reach'd
Italian Earth again, and all was done
That was to be, and nothing furthermore
To deprecate or pray for — • still I pray'd ;
That, whereas human Fortune, having touch'd
The destined height it may not rise beyond,
Forthwith begins as fatal a decline,
Its Fall might but myself and mine involve.
Swerving beside my Country. Be it so !
By my sole sacrifice may jealous Fate
Absolve the Public ; and by such a Triumph
As, in derision of all Human Glory,
Began and closed with those two Funerals.
Yes, at that hour were Perseus and myself
Together two notorious monuments
Standing of Human Instability :
He that was late so absolute a King,
Now Bondsman, and his Sons along with him
Still living Trophies of my Conquest led ;
While I, the Conqueror, scarce had turn'd my face
From one still unextinguisht Funeral,
And from my Triumph to the Capitol
Return — return to close the dying Eyes
Of the last Son I yet might call my own.
124
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Last of all those who should have borne my name
To after Ages down. For ev'n as one
Presuming on a rich Posterity,
And blind to Fate, my two surviving Sons
Into two noble Families of Rome
I had adopted —
And PauUus is the last of all his Name.
II
SIR CHARLES NAPIER
WRITING HOME AFTER THE BATTLE OF MEANEE
{See his Memoirs, Vol. Ii, p. 429.)
[Leaving the Battle to be fought again
Over the wine with all our friends at home,
I needs must tell, before my letter close,
Of one result that you will like to hear.]
The Officers who under my command
Headed and led the British Troops engaged
In this last Battle that decides the War,
Resolved to celebrate the Victory
With those substantial Honours that, you know.
So much good English work begins and ends with.
Resolved by one and all, the day was named ;
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
125
One mighty Tent, with ' room and verge enough '
To hold us all, of many Tents made up
Under the very walls of Hydrabad,
And then and there were they to do me honour.
Some of them grizzled Veterans like myself :
Some scorcht with Indian Sun and Service ; some
With unrecover'd wound or sickness pale ;
And some upon whose boyish cheek the rose
They brought with them from England scarce had faded.
Imagine these in all varieties
Of Uniform, Horse, Foot, Artillery,
Ranged down the gaily decorated Tent,
Each with an Indian servant at his back.
Whose dusky feature. Oriental garb.
And still, but supple, posture of respect
Served as a foil of contrast to the lines
Of animated English Officers.
Over our heads our own victorious Colours
Festoon'd with those wrencht from the Indian hung,
While through the openings of the tent were seen
Darkling the castle walls of Hydrabad ;
And, further yet, the monumental Towers
Of the Kalloras and Talpoors ; and yet
Beyond, and last, — the Field of Meanee,
Yes, there in Triumph as upon the tombs
Of two extinguisht Dynasties we sate.
126
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
Beside the field of blood we quench'd them in.
And I, chief Actor in that Scene of Death,
And foremost in the passing Triumph — I,
Veteran in Service as in years, though now
First call'd to play the General — I myself
So swiftly disappearing from the stage
Of all this world's transaction ! — As I sate.
My thoughts reverted to that setting Sun
That was to rise on our victorious march ;
When from a hillock by my tent alone
I look'd down over twenty thousand Men
Husht in the field before me, like a Fire
Prepared, and waiting but my breath to blaze.
And now, methought, the Work is done ; is done.
And well ; for those who died, and those who live
To celebrate our common Glory, well ;
And, looking round, I whisper'd to myself —
"These are my Children — these whom I have led
Safe through the Vale of Death to Victory,
And in a righteous cause ; righteous, I say.
As for our Country's welfare, so for this,
Where from henceforth Peace, Order, Industry,
Blasted and trampled under heretofore
By every lawless Ruffian of the Soil,
Shall now strike root, and " — I was running on
With all that was to be, when suddenly
FITZGERALD'S MINOR POEMS
127
My Name was call'd; the glass was fiU'd ; all rose;
And, as they pledged me cheer on cheer, the Cannon
Roar'd it abroad, with each successive burst
Of Thunder lighting up the banks now dark
Of Indus, which at Inundation-height,
Beside the Tent we revell'd in roU'd down
Audibly growling — "But a hand-breadth higher.
And whose the Land you boast as all your own ! "
I " These two poems were printed privately on a single sheet of
paper, paged from i to 6. Collation : — Small quarto : pp. 8 (last
two blank and unnumbered). They had apparently been offered to
Mactnillaii's Magazine and declined. In a letter to Prof. E. B.
Cowelh dated May 28, 1868, FitzGerald wrote:
" ' I am sorry to trouble you about Macmillan : I should not have
done so had I kept my Copy with your corrections as well as my
own. As Lamb said of himself, so I say; that I never had any
Luck with printing : I certainly don't mean that I have had much
cause to complain : but, for instance, I know that Livy and Napier,
put into good Verse, are just worth a corner in one of the swarm of
Shilling Monthlies' ('Letters,' ii. 105).
"On July 25, 1868, he wrote to the same correspondent:
" ' I only wanted Macmillan to return the Verses if he wouldn't
use them, because of my having no corrected Copy of them.'
" Probably they had been written several years before, as Mr.
f'rancis Ilindes Groome found a copy of ' Lucius /Emilius Paullus'
in a MS. note-book belonging to liis father. Archdeacon Groome,
which he has reprinted in his delightful book 'Two Suffolk Friends.'
This version differs considerably from that given by Mr. Aldis
Wright in the ' Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald,'
ii. 483, which is a reprint of the privately printed sheet."
W. F. PRTDEAIJX.
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB-
CHARLES LAMB,
Born February lo, in Crown Office Row, Middle
Temple, where his Father, John Lamb (Elia's^ Lovelt)
was confidential Factotum to Samuel Salt, one of the
Benchers. John Lamb had two other children ; John
{James Elid) born in 1763, and a clerk in the South Sea
House; Mary {^Bi-idget Elid) born in 1765.
Charles Lamb sent to Christ's Hospital, where Jem
White an officer ; and Coleridge, George Dyer, and Le
Grice, his school-fellows.
Leaves School.
Made Clerk in the East India House ; occasionally
meeting Coleridge (from Cambridge) at the " Salutation
and Cat," 17, Newgate Street; and by him introduced to
Southey, and Charles Lloyd, all warm with Poetry,
Pantisocracy, &c.
■ " The Data for the life of Charles Lamb are frequently
mentioned in FitzGerald's letters and are here printed from a copy
annotated in his own hand. They do not profess to be exhaustive,
and were only intended to serve as a guide to the readers of Lamb's
Letters as they originally appeared. The notes in square brackets
are added by myself ." — \V. Aldis Wright in Preface to Miscellanies
by Ed-ward FUzGerald (1900), p. vi.
2 "Call him Elliay C. L. to Taylor, his i)ublislior.
1775
1782
1789
1792
I30
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB
1795
1796
1797
Living with paralysed Father, Mother, aged Aunt, and
Sister Mary, on their united means of about ;^i8o a year,
at 7, Little Queen Street, Holborn.
At the end of last year, and beginning of this, C. L. for
six weeks in a mad-house at Hoxton. Soon after this, his
Brother John (who does not live with the Family) is
brought home to be nursed by them after an accident
which threatened his own mind also. And on September
22, Mary Lamb, worn out with nursing her Family, kills
her Mother, beside wounding her Father, in a fit of
insanity. Charles wrests the knife from her hand and
places her in a Private — he will not hear of a Public —
Asylum, for so long as his Father survives.
His Father dying, and canying with him what pension
he had from Mr. Salt, Charles takes his sister home, and
lives with her on little more than his Clerkship of ^100 a
year. The old Aunt who lived with them dies at the
beginning of the year: and another Aunt (Hetty) who
had been taken to live with a Kinswoman is returned
home at the end of it' to linger out nearly three years with
them. In the meanwhile, Charles visits Coleridge in
Somersetshire, where he meets Wordsworth.
• I find but one Aunt named by Lamb's biographers ; but the
oversight may be mine. Certainly two are named as above in
Lamb's letters to Coleridge 19, 22 ; and 29, 34, [Moxon's edition].
[Lamb's Aunt, his father's sister, died 9 Feb. 1797. Hetty, who
died 9 May iSoo, was probably the old maidservant.]
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB
131
Rosamund Gray. Poems by C. Lloyd and C. Lamb
published, some of which had been included in a previous
volume of Coleridge's, who goes to Germany at Mid-
sununer ; up to which time he was Lamb's chief
correspondent and adviser. After which.
Correspondence with Southey ; toward the end of
the year introduction by C. Lloyd to Manning, Math-
ematical Tutor at Cambridge : who becomes Lamb's
most intimate friend and correspondent till his departure
for China.
Established with Mary at 16, Mitre Court Buildings.'
Correspondence with Wordsworth begins.
" John Woodvil " published. About this time Lamb
comes to know Godwin and Hazlitt.
Visit with Mary to Coleridge at Keswick, who, after-
ward engaging to write for the Morning Post, gets Lamb
to jest for it, at £2 2s. a week.
No literary work : punning for the " Post " discontinued.
No Letter extant, save one to Southey : but much drink
and smoke by night, and depression by day : a condition
which, as we know from his own, and his sister's letters,
had begun some years before, and lasted some years
after.
1798
I Before settling here, he had lived at [45] Chapel Street, Penton-
ville; where he fell in love — for the first and only time — with
Hester Savory, the Quaker.
1799
1803
1804
132
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB
1806
1807
1809
1817
1820
1821
1822
1823
Manning goes to China. " Mr. H." written in a 3s. per
week room, acted at Drury Lane and damned.
Tales from " Shakespeare " by C. and M. Lamb.
" Specimens of Old Dramatists :" " Adventures of
Ulysses ;" " Mrs. Leicester's School :" and, soon after
(1810), "Poetry for Children:" in all which, except the
two first. Sister and Brother have a hand.
Removal to 4, Inner Temple Lane, top-story, where the
" Wednesday nights."
Removed to [21,] Great Russell Street, corner' of Bow
Street, (once Will's Coffee House,) by and by taking also
a lodging at 14, Kingsland Road, Dalston, to escape from
over-much company.
" Elia " begun with London Magazine.
John Lamb dies.
Trip to France with Mary, who, taken ill, is left with a
friend at Amiens while Charles runs to Paris, sees Talma,
&c. His only visit abroad.
Elia published separately : difference and reconciliation
with Southey; and removal from lodgings to Cole-
brooke (Coin-brook) Cottage, Lslington, as householders.
During a holiday at Cambridge becomes acquainted with.
I [In a letter to Miss Wordsworth in November 181 7, Mary Lamb
says they are living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street,
Covent Garden. According to a London Directory of that year, No.
21, the comer house, was occupied by Thomas Owen, an ironmonger,
and No. 20 was apparently a private house.]
NOTES ON CHARLES LAMB
^2>i
and finally adopts, Emma Isola, orphan daughter of an
Italian refugee and Esquire Bedell there.
Pensioned off by the India House on ^450 a year, with
a small deduction for Mar)' in case of her surviving him :
as she did for 13 years ; dying May 1847,
Removes from Islington to a small house at Enfield
Chase, where he had previously lodged from time to
time.'
His old servant Becky having married and left, and his
sister too much worried with housekeeping, they go to
lodge and board with Mr. and Mrs. Westwood next door,
in Enfield.
To " Bay Cottage," Church Street, Edmonton, to board
and lodge with Mr, and Mrs. Walden, under whose care
Mary had previously been. Emma Isola marries Moxon
the Publisher at Midsummer.
Coleridge dies July 25 ; and Charles Lamb Dec. 24.^
• On removing from Islington to Enfield in 1827 Lamb had
written to Hood ;
" To change habitations is to die with them, and in my time I
have died seven deaths. My household deaths have been all
periodical, recurring after seven years."
This may include some minor removals ; such as more than once
in .Southampton Buildings, Holbom.
2 He left ;^2000 — all his Earnings — for his Sister's use.
1825
1S27
I«29
1833
1834
THE ONLY DARTER
A SUFFOLK CLERGYMAN'S REMINISCENCE
Our young parson said to me t'other daa, "John,"
sez he, " din't yeou nivver hev a darter?" " Sar," sez I,
" I had one once, but she ha' been dead close on thatty
years." And then I towd him about my poor mor.'
" I lost my fust wife thatty-three years ago. She left
me with six bors and Susan. She was the owdest of
them all, tarned sixteen when her mother died. She was
a fine jolly gal, with lots of sperit. I coon't be alluz at
home, and tho' I'd nivver a wadd^ to saa aginst Susan,
yet I thowt I wanted some one to look arter her and the
bors. Gals want a mother more than bors. So arter a
year I married my second wife, and a rale good wife she
ha' bin to me. But Susan coon't git on with her. She'd
dew 3 what she was towd, but 'twarn't done pleasant, and
when she spook she spook so short. My wife was werry
patient with her ; but dew all she could, she nivver could
git on with Susan.
" I'd a married sister in London, whue cum down to
see us at Whissuntide. She see how things fared, and
she saa to me, ' John,' sez she, ' dew yeou let Susan go
I Afa7ui/ier, y,\T\. 2 Word. ' Ho.
I-.6
THE ONLY DARTER
back with me, and I'll git her a good place and see arter
her.' So 'twas sattled. Susan was all for goin', and when
she went she kiss't me and all the bors, but she nivver sed
nawthin' to my wife, 'cept just ' Good-bye.' She fared to
git a nice quite ' place ; but then my sister left London,
and Susan's missus died, and so she had to git a place
where she could. So she got a place where they took in
lodgers, and Susan and her missus did all the cookin' and
waitin' between 'em. Susan sed arterwards that 'twarn't
what she had to dew, but the runnin' up-stairs ; that's
what killt her. There was one owd gentleman, who lived
at the top of the house. He'd ring his bell, and if she
din't go di-reckly, he'd ring and ring agen, fit to bring
the house down. One daa he rung three times, but Susan
was set fast, and coon't go ; and when she did, he spook
so sharp, that it wholly upset her, and she dropt down o'
the floor all in a faint. He hollered out at the top o' the
stairs ; and sum o' the fooks cum runnin' up to see what
was the matter. Arter a bit she cum round, and they got
her to bed ; but she was so bad that they had to send
for the doctor. The owd gentleman was so wexed, he sed
he'd paa for the doctor as long as he could ; but when
the doctor sed she was breedin' a faver, nawthing would
satisfy her missus but to send her to the horspital, while
she could go.
I Quiet.
THE ONLY DARTER
m
" So she went into the horspital, and laa five weeks and
din't know nobody. Last she begun to mend, and she
sed that the fooks there were werry kind. She had a bed
to herself in a big room with nigh twenty others. Ivry
daa the doctor cum round, and spook to 'em all in tarn.
He was an owdish gentleman, and sum young uns cum
round with him. One mornin' he sjia to Susan, ' Well,
my dear,' sez he, 'how do yeou feel to-day?' She saa,
* Kind o' middlin', sir.' She towd me that one o' the
young gentlemen sort o' laffed when he h'ard her, and
stopped behind and saa to her, ' Do yeou cum out o'
Suffolk t ' She saa, 'Yes ; what, do yeou know me ? ' She
was so pleased ! He axed her where she cum from, and
when she towd him, he saa, ' 1 know the clargyman of the
parish,' He'd a rose in his button-hole, and he took it
out and gov it her, and he saa, ' Yeou'U like to hev it, for
that cum up from Suffolk this mornin'.' Poor mor, she
was so pleased ! Well, arter a bit she got better, and the
doctor saa, ' My dear, yeou must go and git nussed at
home. That'll dew more for yeou than all the doctors'
stuff here.'
" She han't no money left to pria for her jarney. But
the young gentleman made a gatherin' for her, and when
the nuss went with her to the station, he holp her into the
cab, and gov her the money. Whue he was she din't know,
and I don't now, but I alluz siia, ' God bless him for it.'
"MASTER CHARLEY"
A SUFFOLK LABOURER'S STORY
The Owd Master at the Hall had two children — Mr.
James and Miss Mary. Mr. James was ivver so much
owder than Miss Mary. She come kind o' unexpected like,
and she warn't but a little thing when she lost her mother.
When she got owd enough Owd Master sent her to a
young ladies' skule. She was there a soot o' years, and
when she come to stiia at home, she was such a pretty
young lady, that she was. She was werry fond of cum-
pany, but there warn't the lissest bit wrong about her.
There was a young gentleman, from the sheres, who lived
at a farm in the next parish, where he was come to larn
farmin'. He was w-erry fond of her, and though his own
folks din't like it, it was all sattled that he was soon to
marry her. Then he hear'd suffen about her, which warn't
a bit true, and he went awaa, and was persuaded to marry
somebody else. Miss Mary took on bad about it, but that
warn't the wust of it. She had a baby before long, and
he was the father on't.
O lawk, a lawk ! how the Owd Master did break out
when he hear'd of it ! My mother lived close by, and
nussed poor Miss Mary, so I've h'ard all about it. He
woun't let the child stop in the house, but sent it awiia to
a house three miles off, where the woman had lost her
142
MASTER CHARLEY''
child. But when Miss Mary got about, the woman used
to bring the baby — he was "Master Charley" — to my
mother's. One daa, when she went down, my mother
towd her that he warn't well ; so off she went to see him.
When she got home she was late, and the owd man was
kep' waitin' for his dinner. As soon as he see her, he
roared out, " What ! hev yeou bin to see yar bastard ? "
"O father," says she, "yeou shoun't saa so." "Shoun't
saa so," said he, "shoun't I ? I can saa wuss than that."
And then he called her a bad name. She got up, nivver
said a wadd, but walked straight out of the front door.
They din't take much notiz at fust, but when she din't
come back, they got scared, and looked for her all about ;
and at last they found her in the moot, at the bottom of
the orchard.
lawk, a lawk !
The Owd Master nivver could howd up arter that.
'Fore that, if he was put out, yeou could hear 'im all over
the farm, a-cussin' and swearin'. He werry seldom spook
to anybody now, but he was alluz about arly and late ;
nothin' seemed to tire him. 'Fore that he nivver went to
charch ; now he went reg'ler. But he wud saa sumtimes,
comin' out, " Parson's a fule." But if anybody was ill,
he bod 'em go up to the Hall and ax for suffen.' There
was young Farmer Whoo's wife was werry bad, and the
1 Something.
' ' MA S TER CHA RLEV "
H3
doctor saa that what she wanted was London poort. So
he sent my father to the marchant at Ipswich, to bring
back four dozen. Arter dark he was to lave it at the
house, but not to knock. They nivver knew where ta
come from till arter he died. But he fare to get waker,
and to stupe more ivry year.
Yeou ax me about " Master Charley." Well, he growed
up such a pretty bor. He lived along with my mother
for the most part, and Mr. James was so fond of him.
He'd come down, and pliia and talk to him the hour
togither, and Master Charley would foller 'im about like a
little dawg.
One daa they was togither, and Owd Master met 'em.
"James," said he, "what bor is that alluz follerin' yeou
about?" He said, "It's Mary's child." The owd man
tarned round as if he'd bin shot, and went home all
himjMn' along. Folks beared him siia, "Mary's child!
Lord ! Lord ! " When he got in, he sot down, and nivver
spook a wadd, 'cept now and then, " Mary's child ! Lord !
Lord!" He coun't ate no dinner; but he towd 'em to
go for my mother ; and when she come, he siia to her,
" Missus, yeou must git me to bed." And there he laa
all night, nivver slapin' a bit, but goin' on saain, "Mary's
child ! Lord ! Lord 1^'' quite solemn like. Sumtimes he'd
saa, "I've bin a bad un in my time, I hev."
Next mornin' Mr. James sent for the doctor, liut when
144
MASTER CHARLEY"
he come, Owd Master said, "Yeou can do nothin' for
me ; I oon't take none o' yar stuff." No more he would.
Then Mr. James saa, " Would yeou like to see the par-
son ? " He din't saa nothin' for some time, then he said,
" Yeou may send for him." When the parson come —
and he was a nice quite ' owd gentleman, we were werry
fond of him — he went up and staa'd some time; but he
nivver said nothin' when he come down. Howsomdiver,
Owd Master laa more quiter arter that, and when they
axed him to take his med'cin he took it. Then he slep'
for some hours, and when he woke up he called out quite
clear, "James." And when Mr. James come, he siia to
him, "James," sez he, "I ha' left ivrything to yeou; do
yeou see that Mary hev her share." You notiz, he din't
saa, " Mary's child," but " Mary hev her share." Arter a
little while he said, " James, I should like to see the little
chap." He warn't far off, and my mother made him tidy,
and brushed his hair and parted it. Then she took him
up, and put him close to the bed. Owd Master bod 'em
put the curtain back, and he laa and looked at Master
Charley. And then he said, quite slow and tendersome,
" Yeou're a'most as pritty as your mother was, my dear."
Them was the last words he ivver spook.
Mr. James nivver married, and when he died he left
ivrything to Master Charley.
I Quiet
:erning y'
OF Kf
TO THK GRAVE
The Great Eastern route
ilows the coastline. Betv
ig bank:.
•• wide stretches
icken-cov
'mmoiyj v> ., ... .:- • ,
is in full flower. Tk<
c ; as the local adage
;t o' bloom, kiisi
ied by i'
• r, and \\i. ..;
■w-
jKi> sviiere
- :..urish, and
St to the fonsil-bunter, there
lit haun birds; and
altogether
n the -whins are '
rhe seaboard is ;
.a are the sportsman's '
...J. plied cover for sterner
lot so many years ago, when a r^rs^o of brandy d
/■' tobacco was "run " ashore. jrs, for tht
jart, are
i(' Svo. *'p JO
■ao'vr uiu, J C.J a L,.i:j viu uuthitl' for
Hic , t .; aone o' yar stuff." No more he would.
Then Mr. James saa, " Would yeou like to see the par-
■ sl»u ? " He din't saa nothin' for some time, then he said,
'• Veou 'ii.iy send for him." When the parson come —
;• ' .li a nice quite' owd gentleman, we were werry
'im — he went up and staa'd some time; but he
nothin' when he come down. Howsomdiver,
more quiter arter that, and when they
'■■' •:^'-'' 'r h •■ ■ ■" "i^^ -,■ he slep'
iut quite
when > .e, he saa to
ha'iett ivrything to yeou; do
ycv ■ ■' You notiz, he din't
V , ^ • her share." Arter a
• while he ssiv 'd like to see the little
He warn't far oft, and my rnoiher made him tidy,
.bed his hair and parted it. Then she took him
" Master
I Charley. And then he said, quite slow and tendersome,
ou're a'most as pritty as your mother was, my dear."
j i'iiem was the last words he ivver spook.
' Mr jiimes nivver married, r\'^^ uh n :-•- ' n'- .1 h,^ i.-ft-
'•.:• hi";.; to Master Charley.
CONCERNING A PILGRIMAGE TO THE GRAVE
OF EDWARD FITZGERALD •
The Great Eastern route through Suffolk to Yarmouth
follows the coastline. Between the railway and the low-
lying, shingle-terraced shore, with its sand hillocks, where
only coarse matted grass and the sea-thistle flourish, and
its crag banks full of interest to the fossil-hunter, there
are wide stretches of mere, the haunt of wild birds ; and
of bracken-covered heath-land with spinneys of Scotch
fir ; commons which are a glory of golden fire when the
gorse is in full flower. The blossom is never altogether
absent ; as the local adage has it, " When the whins are
out o' bloom, kissin's out o' fashion." The seaboard is
indented by rivers whose avifauna are the sportsman's
delight, and whose creeks supplied cover for sterner
sport not so many years ago, when a cargo of brandy or
silks or tobacco was " run " ashore. These rivers, for the
most part, are navigable within a short distance of their
source, so that there is scarcely a part of the country
more than ten miles from water-ways. At ebb tide, when
" Fifty copies of this Pilgrimage by Edward Clodd were "printed
for private distribution to the members of the Omar Khayydm
Clul)." London, 1894. Ulue wrapper. Fcap 8vo. Pp. 20.
146
A PILGRIMAGE
the mud is uncovered and blends indistinguishably with
the shelving banks, the flat grazing lands, with their long
straight lines of ditches (whence delicious eels are
" pritched "), and the windmills, which help to drain the
soil or which grind the corn ; make the traveller feel that
he must be in Holland, and, looking only eastwards, he
would see a landscape of unredeemed monotony, save
under certain chiaroscuro effects, which invest it with a
weird attractiveness. Turning westward, however, he
would find the scenery not lacking in picturesqueness.
For inland the country is undulating and well-wooded,
revealing through the fine timber of many a park some
noble manor-house, a home "of ancient peace;" often a
moated hall, such as the lovely old example at Parham,
with its Tudor gateway. The hedges, in their tangle of
sweetbriar and sloebush and bramble, which fringe the
well-kept highways and leafy lanes, lead past sleepy little
towns to scattered groups of cottages, — splashes and
dots of red amidst festoons of green, — some on hilly
ground where the square flint-church tower breaks the
skyline ; some by " dewy pastures," or nestling in dells —
native scenes which Gainsborough and Constable painted;
villages where a fair-haired, open-faced peasantry greet
one in a dialect whose every sentence ends in a rising
note, and betrays the source of the nasal twang which the
Puritans carried to the New World.
BouLGE Churchyard
A PILGRIMAGE
147
Such, in bald outline, is the country where Edward
FitzGerald was born, and lived, and died ; and where
reminiscences of the man whom the "yokels," in their
usual assessment of genius, called " dotty," are yet
plentiful. How could they know that the man who
hobnobbed with all, whose largeheartedness took the
oddest and drollest of ways ; who, hearing that a poor
tradeswoman was in trouble, emptied her shop of all its
feminine wares at West End prices ; who " stood " port-
wine to the fisher folk when they sighed for a quart of
beer ; who helped them to buy their boats and gear, and
never asked for repayment of the loans ; who shared
ventures with them in herring craft — Afeum et Tuum one
of these was named, only there was more tuum than
meujn, because he paid the losses and refused the gains
— how could these bumpkins know that here was a man,
the peer of more famous contemporaries, who had the
esteem and affection (" my friendships are like loves," he
said) of Thackeray (Brookfield and "Old Fitz " had first
place in that big heart), Tennyson and his brothers, Dr.
Thompson of Trinity, Spedding, Carlyle, and, among
lesser known worthies, Archdeacons Groome and Allen,
Rev. George Crabbe, son of the poet, and Bernard Barton,
whose daughter he married ? The prophet met the usual
fate in his own country, but yokels are not the only
mortals to whom truth of perspective is denied.
I4S
A PILGRIMAGE
Woodbridge is the starting-point for visits to his homes
and haunts. Gentle and simple there alike knew him
well, and he had his laugh against the microcosm of
provincial life when he named his yacht the Scandal
because there was so much of it in the old town. There,
on the 7th of October last, a party of us, some of whom
knew FitzGerald well, one being kinsman of his, and all
loving the man as revealed in his letters and for the work
which he had done, alighted ; and, under a showery sky,
drove by roads whose bordering trees were showing
nature's beauty of decay in autumn tints, to the spot
where he has lain since June, 1883. We could not stay
to visit the grave of Bernard Barton, Quaker, poet, and
clerk in Alexander's bank for forty years ; neither could
we spare more than a passing look at Bredfield House,
where FitzGerald was born in 1809, or at the home where
his later years were spent. Little Grange, with its " quarter
deck " garden which he loved to pace when old age had
dulled his appetite for the sea.
Boulge reached, we walked across fields to the little
churchyard which adjoins the grounds of the Hall whither
FitzGerald's family removed from Bredfield in 1835, ^"^^
which contains their mausoleum. Close to it is the grave
where he lies under a granite slab, and thither we had
come, in fulfilment of a long-cherished idea, to which the
following incidents had given birth.
A PILGRIMAGE
149
In 1884 Mr. William Simpson, the veteran artist-
traveller of the Illustrated London Ne^vs, accompanied
the Afghan Boundary Commission from Teheran to
Central Asia. The route lay near Naishapiir, the ancient
capital of Khorassan, and the birthplace and burial place
of the poet-astronomer Omar Khayyam ; and thither Mr.
Simpson, to whom the famous quatrains of FitzGerald's
version had long been a precious possession, sped to visit
the grave. The old " tent-maker " who had sung so
sweetly of the "thousand roses" that "each morning
brings," and, infusing his song with pathos, had asked
the fate of those which had blossomed yesterday; had
told his friend Kwajah Nizami that his tomb should be
'• on a spot where the north wind may strew roses upon
it." Omar Khayyam has been dead nigh eight hundred
years, but his words have not passed away. Roses still
scatter their petals by his resting-place, and, luckily, it
happened that Mr. Simpson was there in the autumn
when the bushes were in seed. He gathered some of the
hips, and appropriately sent them to Mr. Quaritch, who
had, with a discernment greater than that of the "able
editor " in whose drawer the manuscript had lain neglected
two years, accepted it from FitzGerald, publishing a poem
which was finally sold for a penny, and is now (speaking
of the first edition) worth its weight in gold. Mr. Quaritch
sent the hips to Kew Gardens, where, under the watchful
ISO
A PILGRIMAGE
care of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, the Director, and of Mr.
Baker, the Keeper, a bush was successfully reared,
although of too delicate a nature to permit transfer to the
cold, clayey soil of Sufifolk. The plant, a very slow grower,
has not even flowered yet, and Mr. Thiselton Dyer tells
me that Mr. Baker is unable to say what is the species,
" but he thinks it comes nearest to R. Beggeriana, which
was found in plenty by the botanist of the Afghan
Commission. This is a bush about six feet high, with
numerous small white flowers." When Mr. Simpson told
his story, it seemed that the fittest thing to do was to
plant a cutting from the rose on FitzGerald's grave, and
into this idea Mr. Thiselton Dyer entered heartily. But,
until the summer of this year, the sluggard plant did not
prove itself strong enough to permit the fulfilment of the
project, and then only by being grafted on a lusty English
stock. Appropriate enough, truly, as emblem of the
new life which FitzGerald gave to the Rubdiydt of Omar
in translating them into vigorous English verse, and
happily expressed in this quatrain which Grant Allen
(one of many — Thomas Hardy, Walter Besant, Hindes
Groome, Aldis Wright, Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang,
Thiselton Dyer, Theodore Watts, and others — who
could be at Boulge only in spirit), sent to the present
writer.
FiTZ Gerald's Grave at Boulge
A PILGRIMAGE
151
Here on FitzGerald's grave, from Omar's tomb,
To lay fit tribute, pilgrim singers flock ;
Long with a double fragrance let it bloom,
This Rose of Iran on an English stock.
When the grafted exotic was ready for planting, a
"pilgrimage " to Boulge was organised under the aegis of
the recently instituted Omar Khayyam Club. Mr. Simpson
narrated the finding and fortunes of the hips ; Mr. Mon-
cure Conway, whose fellow countrymen were among the
first to recognise what immortal poem had been added
to the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race, paid his tribute
to Omar's great interpreter ; and this poetic tribute from
Mr. Edmund Gosse was read :
Reign here, triumphant Rose, from Omar's grave.
Borne by a dervish o'er the Persian wave ;
Reign with fresh pride, since here a heart is sleeping
That double glory to your Master gave.
Hither let many a pilgrim step be bent
To greet the Rose re-risen in banishment ;
Here richer crimsons may its cup be keeping
Than brimmed it ere from Naishapiir it went.
Then a few words of acknowledgment from Colonel
Kerrich, nephew and executor of FitzCerald, followed the
152
A PILGRIMAGE
attachment of a plate, bearing this inscription, to the
grave :
" This Rose-tree, raised in Kew Gardens from seed
brought by William Simpson, artist-traveller, from the
grave of Omar Khayyam at Naishapiir, was planted by a
few admirers of Edward FitzGerald in the name of the
Omar Khayyam Club, 7th October, 1893."
The president of the Club, Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy,
sent his tribute in these graceful verses :
From Naishapiir to England, from the tomb
Where Omar slumbers to the Narrow Room
That shrines FitzGerald 's ashes, Persia sends
Perfume and Pigment of her Rose to bloom.
Wedded with Rose of England, for a sign
That English lips, transmuting the divine
High-piping music of the song that ends.
As it began, with Wine and Wine and Wine,
Across the ages caught the words that fell
From Omar's mouth and made them audible
To the unnumbered sitters at Life's Feast
Who wear their hearts out over Heaven and Hell.
Vex not to-day with wonder which were best,
The Student, Scholar, Singer of the West
A PILGRIMAGE
is:
Or Singer, Scholar, Student of the East —
The soul of Omar burned in England's breast.
And howsoever Autumn's breezes blow
About this Rose, and Winter's fingers throw
In mockery of Oriental noons,
Upon this grass the monumental snow ;
Still in our dreams the Eastern Rose survives
Lending diviner fragrance to our lives :
The World is old, cold, warned by waning moons.
But Omar's creed in English verse revives.
The fountain in the tulip-tinted dale,
The manuscript of some melodious tale
Babbling of love and lover's passion-pale.
Of Rose, of Cypress, and of Nightingale ;
The cup that Saki proffers to our lips.
The cup from which the Rose-Red Mercy drips,
Bidding forget how, like a sinking sail,
Day after day into the darkness slips;
The wisdom that the Watcher of the Skies
Won from the wandering stars that soothed his eyes,
The legend writ below, around, above —
"One thing at least is certain, this Life flies;"
154
A PILGRIMAGE
These were the gifts of Omar — these he gave
Full-handed : his Disciple sought to save
Some portion for his people, and their love
Plants Omar's Rose upon an English grave.
These poetic wreaths, laid as worthy tribute at the
master-singer's feet, had happy addition in this sonnet,
which Mr. Theodore Watts permits me to reprint from
the Athenceum.
PRAYER TO THE WINDS
Hear us, ye winds !
From where the North-wind strows
Blossoms that crown " the King of Wisdom's " tomb.
The trees here planted bring remembered bloom
Dreaming in seed of Love's ancestral Rose
To meadows where a braver North-wind blows
O'er greener grass, o'er hedge-rose, may, and broom.
And all that make East England's field-perfume
Dearer than any fragrance Persia knows :
Hear us, ye winds. North, East, and West, and South !
This granite covers him whose golden mouth
Made wiser ev'n the word of Wisdom's King :
Blow softly o'er the grave of Omar's herald
A PILGRIMAGE
155
Till roses rich of Omar's dust shall spring
From richer dust of Suffolk's rare FitzGerald !
The rose, its roots well struck, may not flower yet
awhile, but it will thereby be fit symbol of the slow appre-
ciation of the life-work of him who is at rest beneath it.
He might have applied to himself Landor's prophecy of
his own tardy recognition : " I shall dine late, but the
room will be well lighted; the guests few and select."
And he might have added : " The viands will be plain,
but there will be good red wine, and the cups will be
drained to-day, though talk may be of to-morrow. " For
the themes of the Kubdiydt are perennial. As magnet
to the pole, the spirit of man turns to the questions which
the ancients asked, to which no answer comes, to
which each must find such solution as he can. The
limitations of knowledge which no man's experience can
transcend ; the silence of the past, the return of none of
the great company who have gone behind " the veil
through which I might not see "; the transitoriness of all
things :
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop ;
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one ;
156
A PILGRIMAGE
the sympathy these thoughts engender in face of our
common frailty and common destiny ; the cheeriness
withal, which, with another Eastern preacher, bids a man,
bowing to what he cannot break, rejoice in his youth ;
" take the Cash and let the Credit go." and refuse naught
that ministers to life's completeness; are they not written
in the Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyam ? And it is the
transmutation of these into our virile English tongue by
the subtle alchemy of him who sleeps at Boulge, that has
secured him an everlasting name.
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