Two Suffolk Friends Part 4

EDWARD FITZGERALD: AN AFTERMATH.

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

(_i.e._, Deborah), who, if ever Crabbe was mentioned in their hearing, always smoothed their black mittens and remarked--"_We_ never thought much of Mr Crabbe."

{Edward FitzGerald: p67.jpg}

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 gra.s.s before it, a summer-house, and a big white figurehead, belike of the shipwrecked Clare. So over the garden-gate FitzGerald leant one June morning, and asked me, a boy of eight, was my father at home. I remember him dimly then as a tall sea- browned man, who took us boys out for several sails, on the first of which I and a brother were both of us woefully sea-sick. Afterwards I remember picnics down the Deben river, and visits to him at Woodbridge, first in his lodgings on the Market Hill over Berry the gunsmith's, and then at his own house, Little Grange. The last was in May 1883. My father and I had been spending a few days with Captain Brooke of Ufford, the possessor of one of the finest private libraries in England. {69} From Ufford we drove on to Woodbridge, and pa.s.sed some pleasant hours with FitzGerald. We walked down to the riverside, and sat on a bench at the foot of the lime-tree walk. There was a small boy, I remember, wading among the ooze; and FitzGerald, calling him to him, said--"Little boy, did you never hear tell of the fate of the Master of Ravenswood?"

And then he told him the story. At dinner there was much talk, as always, of many things, old and new, but chiefly old; and at nine we started on our homeward drive. Within a month I heard that FitzGerald was dead.

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

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

FitzGerald's charities are probably forgotten, unless by the recipients; and how many of them must be dead, old soldiers as they mostly were, and suchlike! But this I have heard, that one man borrowed 200 pounds of him. Three times he regularly paid the interest, and the third time FitzGerald put his note of hand in the fire, just saying he thought that would do. His simplicity dated from very early times. For when he was at Trinity, his mother called on him in her coach-and-four, and sent a gyp to ask him to step down to the college-gate, but he could not come--his only pair of shoes was at the cobbler's. And down to the last he was always perfectly careless as to dress. I can see him now, walking down into Woodbridge, with an old Inverness cape, double-breasted, flowered satin waistcoat, slippers on feet, and a handkerchief, very likely, tied over his hat. Yet one always recognised in him the Hidalgo.

Never was there a more perfect gentleman. His courtesy came out even in his rebukes. A lady one day was sitting in a Woodbridge shop, gossiping to a friend about the eccentricities of the Squire of Boulge, when a gentleman, who was sitting with his back to them, turned round, and, gravely bowing, gravely said, "Madam, he is my brother." They were eccentric, certainly, the FitzGeralds. FitzGerald himself remarked of the family: "We are all mad, but with this difference--_I_ know that I am." And of that same brother he once wrote to my father:--

LOWESTOFT: _Dec._ 2/66.

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

E. F. G.

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

LOWESTOFT, _Tuesday_, _Feb._ 16, 1875.

You may have heard that my Brother Peter is dead, of Bronchitis, at Bournemouth. He was taken seriously ill on Thursday last, and died on Sat.u.r.day without pain; and I am told that his last murmured words were _my_ name--thrice repeated. A more amiable Gentleman did not live, with something _helpless_ about him--what the Irish call an "Innocent man"--which mixed up Compa.s.sion with Regard, and made it perhaps stronger. . . .

Many odd tales were current in Woodbridge about FitzGerald himself. How once, for example, he sailed over to Holland, meaning to look upon Paul Potter's "Bull," but how, on arriving there, he found a favourable homeward breeze, and so sailed home. How, too, he took a ticket for Edinburgh, but at Newcastle found a train on the point of starting for London, and, thinking it a pity to lose the chance, returned thereby.

Both stories must be myths, for we learn from his letters that in 1861 he really did spend two days in Holland, and in 1874 other two in Scotland.

Still, I fancy both stories emanated from FitzGerald, for all Woodbridge united could not have hit upon Paul Potter's "Bull."

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

"I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ign.o.bly, easy on that score.

Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the Curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one's own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her place. Had I Alfred's voice, I would not have mumbled for years over In Memoriam and The Princess, but sung such strains as would have revived the [Greek text] 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: G.o.d send their dark forebodings may prove false! But they clouded his life, and were partly the cause why, Ajax-like, he loitered in his tent.

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

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

A former rector of Woodbridge, now many years dead, once called on FitzGerald to express his regret that he never saw him at church. "Sir,"

said FitzGerald, "you might have conceived that a man has not come to my years of life without thinking much of these things. I believe I may say that I have reflected on them fully as much as yourself. You need not repeat this visit." Certain it is that FitzGerald's was a most reverent mind, and I know that the text on his grave was of his own choosing--"It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." I know, too, that sometimes he would sit and listen in a church porch while service was going on, and slip away unperceived before the people came out. Still, it seems to me beyond question that his version of the '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 _Whence_, like Water w.i.l.l.y-nilly flowing; And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I know not _Whither_, w.i.l.l.y-nilly blowing.

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

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

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

FitzGerald proved a most kindly contributor to the series of "Suffolk Notes and Queries" that I edited for the 'Ipswich Journal' in 1877-78.

The following were some of his notes, all signed "Effigy"--a play on his initials:--

"_Major Moor_, _David Hume_, _and the Royal George_.--In a review of Burton's Life of Hume, p. 354 of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' April 1849, is the following quotation from the book, and the following note upon it:

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

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

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

"_Suffolk Minstrelsy_.--These fragments of a Suffolk Harvest-Home Song, remembered by an old Suffolk Divine, offer room for historical and lyrical conjecture. I think the song must consist of _tew_ several fragments.

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

"The Count de Gra.s.se he stood amaz'd, And frigh-te-ned he were, For to see these bold Bri-tons So active in war."

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

The Suffolk dialect was ever a pet hobby of FitzGerald's. For years he was meditating a new edition of Major Moor's 'Suffolk Words,' but the question never was settled whether words of his own collecting were to be incorporated in the body of the work or relegated to an appendix. So the notion remained a notion. Much to our loss, for myself I prefer his 'Sea- Words and Phrases along the Suffolk Coast' (in the scarce 'East Anglian,'

1868-69 {81}) to half his translations. For this "poor old Lowestoft sea- slang," as FitzGerald slightingly calls it, ill.u.s.trates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries such as these:--

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

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

"CARDS.--Though often carried on board to pa.s.s away the time at All-fours, Don, or Sir-wiser (_q.v._), nevertheless regarded with some suspicion when business does not go right. A friend of mine vowed that, if his ill-luck continued, over the cards should go; and over they went.

Opinions differ as to swearing. One Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as 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 do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. 'Well then, says the Bishop, just for this once then.'"

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

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

FitzGerald's hesitancy about Major Moor's book was typical of the man. I am a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sage from a letter of Mr W. B. Donne's, of date 25th March 1876.

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