Edward FitzGerald was born at Bredfield House in Suffolk, an old Jacobean
mansion about two miles from Woodbridge, on the 31st of March, 1809. He
was the third son of John Purcell, who married his cousin Mary Frances
FitzGerald, and upon the death of her father in 1818 took the name and
arms of FitzGerald. In 1816 Mr. Purcell went to France, and for a time
settled with his family at St. Germains. FitzGerald in later life would
often speak of the royal hunting parties which he remembered seeing in
the forest. They afterwards removed to Paris, occupying the house in
which Robespierre had once lived, and here FitzGerald had for his
drillmaster one of Napoleon's Old Guard. Even at this early period the
vivacious humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn
itself, for his father writing to some friends in England speaks of
little Edward keeping the whole family in good spirits by his unfailing
fun and droll speeches. The dramatic circumstances of the assassination
of M. Fualdes, a magistrate at Rodez, in 1817, and the remarkable trial
which followed, fastened themselves on FitzGerald's memory, and he was
familiar with all the details which he had heard spoken of when quite a
child in Paris. In 1821 he was sent to King Edward the Sixth's School at
Bury St. Edmunds, where his two elder brothers were already under the
charge of Dr. Malkin, who, like himself in after life, was a great
admirer of Crabbe. Among his schoolfellows were James Spedding and his
elder brother, W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble, and William Airy the brother of
Sir George Airy, formerly Astronomer-Royal. I have often heard him say
that the best piece of declamation he had ever listened to was Kemble's
recitation of Hotspur's speech, beginning 'My liege, I did deny no
prisoners,' on a prize day at Bury. When he left for Cambridge in 1826
the Speddings were at the head of the School. He was entered at Trinity
on 6th February 1826 under Mr. (afterwards Dean) Peacock and went into
residence in due course in the following October, living in lodgings at
Mrs. Perry's (now Oakley's), No. 19 King's Parade. James Spedding did
not come up till the year following, and his greatest friends in later
life, John Allen, afterwards Archdeacon of Salop, W. M. Thackeray, and W.
H. Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity, were his juniors at the
University by two years. The three Tennysons were also his
contemporaries, but it does not appear that he knew them till after he
had left Cambridge. Indeed, in a letter to Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Miss
Thackeray), written in 1882, he says of the Laureate, 'I can tell you
nothing of his College days; for I did not know him till they were over,
though I had seen him two or three times before. I remember him well--a
sort of Hyperion.'
FitzGerald was unambitious of University distinctions and was not in the
technical sense a reading man, but he passed through his course in a
leisurely manner, amusing himself with music and drawing and poetry, and
modestly went out in the Poll in January 1830, after a period of suspense
during which he was apprehensive of not passing at all. Immediately
after taking his degree he went to stay with his brother-in-law, Mr.
Kerrich, at Geldestone Hall, near Beccles, where he afterwards spent much
of his time. While there, and still undecided as to his future
movements, he writes to his friend John Allen that his father had to some
extent decided for him by reducing his allowance, a measure which would
compel him to go and live in France. It was apparently not in
consequence of this, for the difficulty with his father was
satisfactorily arranged, that he went in the spring of 1830 to Paris,
where his aunt, Miss Purcell, was living. Thackeray joined him for a
short time in April, but left suddenly, and was the bearer of a hurried
letter written by FitzGerald at the Palais Royal to the friend who was at
this time his chief correspondent.
'If you see Roe (the Engraver, not the Haberdasher) give him my
remembrance and tell him I often wish for him in the Louvre: as I do
for you, my dear Allen: for I think you would like it very much. There
are delightful portraits (which you love most), and statues so
beautiful that you would for ever prefer statues to pictures. There
are as fine pictures in England: but not one statue so fine as any
here. There is a lovely and very modest Venus: and the Gladiator: and
a very majestic Demosthenes, sitting in a chair, with a roll of
writing in his hands, and seemingly meditating before rising to speak.
It is quite awful.'
FitzGerald remained in France till about the end of May, and before
leaving wrote again to Allen, not perhaps altogether seriously, yet with
more truth than he imagined, of his future mode of life.
'I start for England in a week, as I purpose now: I shall go by Havre
de Grace and Southampton, and stay for a month or two perhaps at
Dartmouth, a place on the Devonshire coast. Tell Thackeray that he is
never to invite me to his house, as I intend never to go: not that I
would not go out there rather than any place perhaps, but I cannot
stand seeing new faces in the polite circles. You must know I am
going to become a great bear: and have got all sorts of Utopian ideas
into my head about society: these may all be very absurd, but I try
the experiment on myself, so I can do no great hurt. Where I shall go
in the summer I know not.'
In the end he made Southampton his headquarters and spent several weeks
there, going on short excursions to visit some college acquaintances. In
November he was at Naseby, where his father had a considerable estate,
including the famous battlefield, of which we shall hear more in his
later correspondence. 'This place is solitary enough,' he writes to John
Allen, 'but I am well off in a nice farm-house. I wish you could come
and see the primitive inhabitants, and the fine field of Naseby. There
are grand views on every side: and all is interesting. . . . Do you
know, Allen, that this is a very curious place with odd fossils: and
mixed with bones and bullets of the fight at Naseby; and the identical
spot where King Charles stood to see the battle. . . . I do wish you and
Sansum were here to see the curiosities. Can't you come? I am quite the
King here I promise you. . . . I am going to-day to dine with the
Carpenter, a Mr. Ringrose, and to hear his daughter play on the
pianoforte. Fact.
'My blue surtout daily does wonders. At Church its effect is truly
delightful.'
It was at Naseby, in the spring of the following year (1831), that he
made his earliest attempt in verse, the earliest at any rate which has
yet been discovered. Charles Lamb, writing to Moxon in August, tells
him, 'The Athenaeum has been hoaxed with some exquisite poetry, 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 humor of our old writers more than the sickly
melancholy of the Byronian wits. If my verses be not good, they are good
humored, and that is something.' With a few verbal changes they were
sent to the Athenaeum, and appeared in that paper on July 9, 1831,
accompanied by a note of the Editor's, from which it is evident that he
supposed them to have been written by Lamb.
_To the Editor of the Athenaeum_.