EDWARD FITZGERALD AND “POSH” “HERRING MERCHANTS”

include a number of letters from edward fitzgerald to joseph fletcher or “posh,” not hitherto published

by JAMES BLYTH

with sixteen illustrations

LONDON JOHN LONG NORRIS STREET, HAYMARKET mcmviii

p. 4Copyright by John Long, 1908 All Rights Reserved

p. 5to W. ALDIS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A. vice-master of trinity college, cambridge i dedicate this sketch with most sincere thanks for his invaluable assistance in connection therewith and for his permission to print the letters of edward fitzgerald which are now published for the first time

JAS. BLYTH

March, 1908

p. 7PREFACE

There can be no better foreword to this little sketch of one of the phases of Edward FitzGerald’s life than the following letter, written to Thomas Carlyle in 1870, which was generously placed at my disposal by Dr. Aldis Wright while I was giving the sketch its final revision for the press. The portrait referred to in the letter is no doubt that reproduced as the photograph of 1870.

“Dear Carlyle, “Your ‘Heroes’ put me up to sending you one of mine—neither Prince, Poet, or Man of Letters, but Captain of a Lowestoft Lugger, and endowed with all the Qualities of Soul and Body to make him Leader of many more men than he has under him. Being unused to sitting for his p. 8portrait, he looks a little sheepish—and the Man is a Lamb with Wife, Children, and dumber Animals. But when the proper time comes—abroad—at sea or on shore—then it is quite another matter. And I know no one of sounder sense, and grander Manners, in whatever Company. But I shall not say any more; for I should only set you against him; and you will see all without my telling you and not be bored. So least said soonest mended, and I make my bow once more and remain your “Humble Reader, “E. FG.”

Too much has been made by certain writers, with more credulity than discretion, of some personal characteristics of a great-hearted man. My purpose in tendering this sketch to the lovers of FitzGerald is to show that in many ways he has been calumniated. The man who could write the letters to his humble friend, which are here p. 9printed; the man who could show such consistent tenderness and delicacy of spirit to his fisherman partner, and could permit the enthusiasm of his affection to blind him to the truth, was no sulky misanthrope; but a man whose heart, whose intensely human heart, was so great as to preponderate over his magnificent intellect. Edward FitzGerald was a great poet, and a great philosopher. He was a still greater man.

Therefore, my readers, if, during the perusal of these few letters, you “in your . . . errand reach the spot”—whether it be at Woodbridge, Lowestoft, or in that supper-room in town “Where he made one”—“. . . turn down an empty glass” to his memory.

For there is no Saki to do it, either here or with the houris.

James Blyth

p. 13INTRODUCTION

Towards the end of the summer of 1906 I received a letter from Mr. F. A. Mumby, of the Daily Graphic, asking me if I knew if Joseph Fletcher, the “Posh” of the “FitzGerald” letters, was still alive. All about me were veterans of eighty, ay, and ninety! hale and garrulous as any longshoreman needs be. But it had never occurred to me before that possibly the man who was Edward FitzGerald’s “Image of the Mould that Man was originally cast in,” the east coast fisherman for whom the great translator considered no praise to be too high, might be within easy reach.

My first discovery was that to most of the good people of Lowestoft the name of the man who had honoured the town by his preference was unknown. A solicitor p. 14in good practice, a man who is by way of being an author himself, asked me (when I named FitzGerald to him) if I meant that FitzGerald who had, he believed, made a lot of money out of salt! A schoolmaster had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar.

It was plain that the educated classes of Lowestoft could help me in my search but little. So I went down to the harbour basins and the fish wharves, and asked of “Posh” and his “governor.”

Not a jolly boatman of middle age in the harbour but knew of both. “D’ye mean Joe Fletcher, master?” said one of them. “What—old Posh? Why yes! Alive an’ kickin’, and go a shrimpin’ when the weather serve. He live up in Chapel Street. Number tew. He lodge theer.”

So up I went to Chapel Street, one of those streets in the old North Town of Lowestoft which have seen better days. A wizened, bent, white-haired old lady p. 15answered my knock, after a preliminary inspection from a third-floor window of my appearance. This, I learnt afterwards, was old Mrs. Capps, with whom Posh had lodged since the death of his wife, fourteen years previously.

“You’ll find him down at the new basin,” said the old lady. “He’s mostly there this time o’ day.”

But there was no Posh at the new basin. Half a dozen weather-beaten shrimpers (in their brown jumpers, and with the fringe of hair running beneath the chin from ear to ear—that hirsute ornament so dear to East Anglian fishermen) were lounging about the wharf, or mending the small-meshed trawl-nets wherein they draw what spoil they may from the depleted roads.

All were grizzled, most were over seventy if wrinkled skin and white hair may be taken as signs of age. And all knew Posh, and (oh! shame to the “educated p. 16classes!”) all remembered Edward FitzGerald. The poet, the lovable, cultured gentleman they knew nothing of. Had they known of his incomparable paraphrase of the Persian poet, of his scholarship, his intimacy with Thackeray, Tennyson, Carlyle, the famous Thompson, Master of Trinity, they would have recked nothing at all. But they remembered FitzGerald, who has been called by their superiors an eccentric, miserly hermit. They remembered him, I say, as a man whose heart was in the right place, as a man who never turned a deaf ear to a tale of trouble.

“Ah!” said one of them. “He was a good gennleman, was old Fitz.” (They all spoke of him as “old Fitz.” They thought of him as a “mate”—as one who knew the sea and her moods, and would put up with her vagaries even as they must do. His shade in their memories was the shade of a friend, and a friend whom they respected and loved.) “That was a good day for p. 17Posh when he come acrost him. Posh! I reckon you’ll find him at Bill Harrison’s if he bain’t on the market.”

“Posh” was no fancy name of the poet’s for Joseph Fletcher, but the actual proper cognomen by which the man has been known on the coast since he was a lad. Most east coast fishermen have a nickname which supersedes their registered name, and “Posh” (or now “old Posh”) was Joseph Fletcher’s.

Bill Harrison’s is a cosy little beerhouse in the lower North Town. It is called Bill Harrison’s because Bill Harrison was once its landlord. Poor Bill has left house and life for years. But the house is still “Bill Harrison’s.”

Here I found Posh. At that time, little more than a year ago, I wrote of him as “a hale, stoutly-built man of over the middle height, his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face encircled by the fringe of iron-grey whiskers running round from ear to ear beneath p. 18the chin. His broad shoulders were held square, his back straight, his head poised firm and alert on a splendid column of neck.”

Alas! The description would fit Posh but poorly now.

“Yes,” said he. “I was Mr. FitzGerald’s partner. But I can’t stop to mardle along o’ ye now. I’ll meet ye when an’ where ye like.”

I made an appointment with him, which he failed to keep. Then another. Then another, and another. I lay wait for him in likely places. I stalked him. I caught stray glimpses of him in various haunts. But he always evaded me.

I think old Mrs. Capps got tired of leaning her head out of the third-floor window of No. 2 Chapel Street, and seeing me waiting patiently on the doorstep expectant of Posh.

At length I cornered him (from information received) fairly and squarely at the p. 19Magdala House, a beerhouse in Duke’s Head Street, two minutes’ walk from his lodgings.

I got him on his legs and took him down Rant Score to Bill Harrison’s.

“Now look here,” said I. “What’s the matter? You’ve made appointment after appointment, and kept none of them. Why don’t you wish to see me?”

Posh shuffled his feet on, the sanded bricks. He drank from the measure of “mild beer” (twopenny), for which he will call in preference to any other liquid.

“Tha’ss like this here, master,” said he. “I ha’ had enow o’ folks a comin’ here an’ pickin’ my brains and runnin’ off wi’ my letters and never givin’ me so much as a sixpence.”

“Oho!” I thought. “That’s where the rub is.”

I gave him a trifling guarantee of good faith, and his face brightened up. Gradually I overcame his reserve, and gradually I p. 20persuaded him that I did not seek to rob him of anything. I’m a bit of a sailor myself, and I think a little talk of winds, shoals, seas, and landmarks did more than the trifling guarantee of good faith to establish friendly relations with the old fellow.

But he made no secret of his grievance, and I tell the tale as he told it, without vouching for its accuracy, but confident that he believed that he was telling me the truth. And, if he was, the man referred to in his story, the man who robbed him to all intents and purposes, is hereby invited to do something to purge his offence by coming forward and “behaving like a gennleman”—upon which I will answer for it that all will be forgiven and forgotten by Posh.

“Ye see, master,” said Posh, “that was a Mr. Earle” (I don’t know if that is the correct way of spelling the name, because Posh is no great authority on spelling; p. 21but that’s how he pronounced it) “come here, that’ll be six or seven year ago, and he axed me about the guv’nor, and for me to show him any letters I had. He took a score or so away wi’m, and he took my phootoo and I told him a sight o’ things, thinkin’ he was a gennleman. Well, he axed me round to Marine Parade, where he was a stayin’ with his lady, and he give me one drink o’ whisky. And that’s all I see of him. He was off with the letters and all, and never gave me a farden for what he had or what he l’arnt off o’ me. I heerd arterwards as the letters was sold by auction for thutty pound. I see it in the paper. If he’d ha’ sent me five pound I’d ha’ been content. But he niver give me nothin’ but that one drink. And ye see, master, I didn’t know as yew worn’t one o’ the same breed!”

I have endeavoured to trace these letters, and to identify this Mr. Earle. Mr. Clement Shorter has been kind enough to do his p. 22best to help me. No record can be found. And to clinch matters, Dr. Aldis Wright (whom I cannot thank enough for all his kindness to me in connection with this volume) tells me that he has never been able to find out where the letters are or who has them. One thing is certain: the person who took advantage of Posh’s ignorance will not be able to publish his ill-gotten gains in England so long as any copyright exists in the letters. For no letter of FitzGerald’s can be published without the consent of Dr. Aldis Wright, and he is not the man to permit capital to be made out of sharp practice with his consent. I have heard rumours of certain letters to Posh being published in America, with a photograph of Posh and Posh’s “shud.” They may have been published under the impression that they were properly in the possession of the person holding them. I know nothing of that, nor of what letters they are, nor who p. 23published

them, nor when and where they were issued. But I do know what Posh has told me, and if the volume (if there is one) was published in America by one innocent of trickery, here is his chance to come forward and explain.

I was glad to see that Posh no longer numbered me among “that breed.” But I was no longer surprised at the difficulty I had experienced in getting to close quarters with the man. From that time on he was the plain-speaking, independent, humorous, rough man that he is naturally. He has his faults. FitzGerald indicates one in several of his letters. He is inclined to that East Anglian characteristic akin to Boer “slimness,” and it is easy enough to understand that the breach between him and his “guv’nor” was inevitable. The marvel is that the partnership lasted as long as it did, and that that refined, honourable gentleman (and I doubt if any one was ever quite so perfect a gentleman as Edward p. 24FitzGerald) was as infatuated with the breezy stalwart comeliness of the man as his letters prove him to have been.

As all students of FitzGerald’s letters know, the association between FitzGerald and Posh ended in a separation that was very nearly a quarrel, if a man like FitzGerald can be said to quarrel with a man like Posh. But Posh never says a word against his old guv’nor’s generosity and kindness of heart. He puts his point of view with emphasis, but always maintains that had it not been for other “interfarin’ parties” there would never have been any unpleasantness between him and the great man who loved him so well, and whom, I believe in all sincerity, he still loves as a kind, upright, and noble-hearted gentleman.

And as Posh’s years draw to a close (he was born in June, 1838) I think his thoughts must often hark back to the days when he was all in all to his guv’nor. For p. 25evil times have come on the old fellow. He is no longer the hale, stalwart man I first saw at Bill Harrison’s.

A little before the Christmas of 1906 he was laid up with a severe cold. But he was getting over that well, when, one Sunday, a broken man, almost decrepit, came stumbling to my cottage door.

“The pore old lady ha’ gorn,” he said. “She ha’ gorn fust arter all. Pore old dare. She had a strook the night afore last, and was dead afore mornin’.”

Into the circumstances of his old landlady’s death, of the action of her legal personal representatives, I will not go here. It suffices to say that Posh and the other lodgers in the house were given two days to “clear out” and that I discovered that the old fellow had been sleeping in his shed on the beach for two nights, without a roof which he could call his home. Thanks to certain readers of the Daily Graphic and to the members of the Omar p. 26Khayyám Club, I had a fund in hand for Posh’s benefit, and immediately put a stop to his homelessness. Indeed, he knew of this fund, and that he could draw on it at need when he chose. But I believe the old man’s heart was broken. He has never been the same man since. The last year has put more than ten years on the looks and bearing of the Posh whom I met first. But his memory is still good, and I was surprised to see how much he remembered of the people mentioned in the letters published in this volume when I read them through to him the other day. He cannot understand how it is that these letters have any

value. He tells me he has torn up “sackfuls on ’em” and strewn them to the winds. The actual letters have been sold for his benefit, and I think that FitzGerald would be pleased if he knew (as possibly he does know) that his letters to his fisherman friend, have proved a stay to his old age.

p. 27I have done my best to give approximate dates to the letters, and where I have succeeded in being absolutely correct I have to thank Dr. Aldis Wright, whose courtesy and kindliness, the courtesy and kindliness from a veteran to a tyro which is so encouraging to the tyro, have been beyond any expression of thanks which I can phrase. I hope that the letters and notes may help to make a side of FitzGerald, the simple human manly side, better known, and to enable my readers to judge his memory from the point of view of those old shrimpers by the new basin as a “good gennleman,” as a noble-hearted, courageous man, as well as the more artificial scholar who quotes Attic scholiasts in a playful way as though they were school classics. Every new discovery of FitzGerald’s life seems to create new wonder, new admiration for him; and there are, I hope, few who will read without some emotion not far p. 28from tears the sentence in his sermon to Posh.

“Do not let a poor, old, solitary, and sad Man (as I really am, in spite of my Jokes), do not, I say, let me waste my Anxiety in vain. I thought I had done with new Likings: and I had a more easy Life perhaps on that account: now I shall often think of you with uneasiness, for the very reason that I had so much Liking and Interest for you.”

p. 29CHAPTER I THE MEETING

The biography of a hero written by his valet would be interesting, and, according to proverbial wisdom, unbiased by the heroic repute of its subject. But it would be artificial for all that. Even though the hero be no hero to his valet, the valet is fully aware of his master’s fame; indeed, the man will be so inconsistent as to pride himself, and take pleasure in, those qualities of his master, the existence of which he would be the first to deny.

Where, however, a literary genius condescends to an intimacy with a simple son of sea and shore who is not only practically p. 30illiterate but is entirely ignorant of his patron’s prowess, the opinions of the illiterate concerning the personal characteristics of the genius obtain a very remarkable value as being honest criticism by man of man, uninfluenced by the spirit either of disingenuous adulation or of equally disingenuous depreciation. That these opinions are in the eyes of a disciple of the great man quaint, almost insolently crude is a matter of course. But when they tend to show the master not only great in letters but great in heart, soul, human kindness, and generosity, they form, perhaps, the most notable tribute to a great personality.

With the exception of Charles Lamb, no man’s letters have endeared his memory to so many readers as have the letters of Edward FitzGerald. But FitzGerald’s friends (to whom most of the letters hitherto published were addressed) were cultured gentlemen, men of the first rank of the time, of the first rank of all time, p. 31men who would necessarily be swayed by the charm of his culture, by the delicacy of his wit, by the refinement of his thoughts.

In the case of “Posh,” however (that typical Lowestoft fisherman who supplied “Fitz” with a period of exaltation which was as extraordinary as it was self-revealing), there were no extraneous influences at work. Posh knew the man as a good-hearted friend, a man of jealous affection, as a free-handed business partner, as a lover of the sea. He neither knew nor cared that his partner (he would not admit that “patron” would be the better word!) was the author of undying verse. To this day it is impossible to make him understand that reminiscences of FitzGerald are of greater public interest than any recollection of him—Posh.

It was not easy to explain to him that it was his first meeting with Edward FitzGerald that was the thing and not the theft of his (Posh’s) father’s longshore lugger p. 32which led to that meeting. However, time and patience have rendered it possible to separate the wheat from the tares of his narrative; and what tares may be left may be swallowed down with the more nutritious grain without any deleterious effect.