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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 FACSIMILE of AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER 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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 H 
 
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 O 
 
 Ph 
 
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. . . ." 
 
o 
 
 X 
 
 h 
 
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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