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 hell," 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 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. 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 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 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,