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escaped hebdomadal burnings, from a visit that I paid to Woodbridge in the summer of 1889, and from reminiscences and unpublished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 Khayyám, 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 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 Saturday 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 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.”